Making Progress!

Today I felt a break through of some kind. 

Not sure what it was, 

but the patients were eager and happy to get right to work! 

I brought images of simple landscape paintings 

for them to use as inspiration. 

We got them started by drawing the horizon line

(and more if needed).  

They just took off from there, and the results were amazing! 

Mary Lou, forever reluctant, allowed herself 

to put paint on the paper! 

I always encourage Barbara to just "do her thing" 

and today she happily went at it. 

Very quietly, this woman worked happily the whole time. 

That dot on the image I gave her is a very small boat. 

I love her version of it! 

We drew some lines for Pat and then she was off and running.

The whole time, telling us

"I don't know what I am doing!" 

This woman was very wary at first and said the white paper "distracted her."

(Later she told me she used to paint with oils! No wonder!) 

Look at that sky! 

This is one of my favorites.

This was a real struggle for his gal, 

but she was so excited about it the whole time!  

I just think this is an unbelievable

interpretation!  

I am thrilled that, as much as they protest; 

"I'm not an artist!  I can't do this! I don't know what I'm doing! 

What am I supposed to do next? I want to go home!"....

they manage to do this amazing work! 

I tell them that most "artists" don't know what they are doing! 

They just do it for the joy of doing it. 

There are no "mistakes" in art, just "happy accidents". 

They get a kick out of that. 

It warms my heart that they seem "get" the joy 

of just putting paint on paper 

and letting go a little! 

Stripes

Judith took this image of a piece of art 

she saw at the South Shore Art Center last summer. 

We thought this would be another great "group project" for our group.

I wasn't sure how they would react, and was pleasantly surprised.

I gave them pink paper to put under the watercolor paper,

so they could "go beyond the border". 

We told them to cover the whole paper

with bands of different colors. 

This woman was upset about that "drip".

I told her it looked like the sun in a sunset. 

This woman is an artist and loved playing with the paint. 

She just couldn't stay with stripe idea. 

Many of them just started putting stripes of color on the pink paper

so we just let it go. 

Amazing! 

The woman who is an artist did this with just one color!

Here are some of the pieces put together to make a 

"blanket of stripes"! 

Again, I am finding that they are happiest when putting paint on paper. 

It really doesn't matter 

what it is that they are painting.