“From the Inside Out”

This second blog post of my new series “Spiritual Painting and Technique” will cover my method of painting from the inside out. If you missed the first post of the series, click here to catch up.

This 2+ minute video “Bear” is a good example of what I mean by painting from the inside out. I didn’t sketch or lay out the composition in any way. I put my paintbrush in the center of the canvas and painted the heart of the subject first. This is not what artists typically do, as most painters work the entire composition in a planned way. My style is to dive right into the most important part of the painting and then build the rest of it from there.

This second example “Dancer in a Floral Forest” is a bit different because the center of the composition isn’t as clear. The heart of the painting could be thought of as the dancer, even though the subject is positioned off center toward the right. I chose to treat the forest as the life force of the painting and my “inside out” method meant that I painted the trees first and then built the rest of the painting around them. But overall, my method is the same: painting the center first and then working the outside areas.

Now how do we apply today’s painting technique to a spiritual metaphor? Imagine our lives as a blank canvas, that’s a common metaphor and easy to apply to ourselves. Next, imagine that the parts of our lives that we value the most are in the center.

Do we try to plan the whole composition and start by working all parts of the painting as a whole, sketching, fretting and spending a lot of time on the unimportant outer areas first? Maybe we’re nervous about not getting what we most want, so we procrastinate working on the things that we most value. We instead become distracted by the less important things, the outer areas instead of the heart of our lives.

We might think that by working from the outside in, by the time we reach the center we’ll be better prepared. And yes, that might be true, but it’s also possible that the passion of what could have been has dimmed. We may have missed our opportunity. By the time we get to the heart of it all, the plan may have changed. Maybe time has run out and the center never gets finished.

Working from the “inside out” in painting means having courage to take risks. I could make fewer mistakes if I sketch my compositions and work the lesser parts before diving into the center, but creating art through structure and formula may dim the passion. Will my art have the same vibrancy or will the energy wane?

Working from the “inside out” in life can be the same. It means having courage to take risks. We may make fewer mistakes if we stick to a plan and work the lesser important aspects of our lives first, before diving in to the things that we care about the most. But delaying our life’s purpose may dim the passion and the energy may wane. Perhaps what we are called to do will never happen, and the people we were meant to love will never feel the fullness of our joy.

Even if painting from the inside out doesn’t appeal to you, I hope that you will consider LIVING from the inside out. Every day we are alive is a blessing. Let us not waste a single minute. Dive into the center.

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