What Abstract Painting and Somatic Bodywork Have in Common

Art was my first love, and also one of the first things I let go of when I started calculating what held value in the world. In high school I turned toward math and science, toward what seemed more serious, more worthy of ambition.

In my twenties I found my way back, but on terms that still weren't quite free. I had been making meticulous pen and ink work, precise, controlled, satisfying to finish but not joyful to make. There was a rigidity to it, a need for control, that kept the joy out of it. Eventually I stopped altogether for about a year. When I returned, I bought canvases and paints and gave myself one instruction: it's okay if this isn't beautiful. My intention was to move out of my head and into my body, to let go of the pressure I had been putting on myself to produce something worthy and just let my intuition lead.

What I found was that abstract painting is liberating precisely because of the permission it asks you to give yourself, and to keep giving yourself, every time you pick up a brush. I started following impulse rather than plan, layering paint, reworking and transforming the canvas, staying with it until something emerged that felt true. I learned to wait for the painting to speak rather than continually speaking to it. And in that process of continual surrender, I would always find my way to something that resonated as beautiful in my own heart.

The forms I am naturally drawn to are organic, curved, and innocent yet primordial. They are the shapes found in flowers, cells, or the coat of an animal, forms I used to doodle in the margins of notebooks as a kid, before anyone told me what good art was supposed to look like. They are the forms of my younger self.

What I've found through both art and somatic work is that the ways we learn to manage and control ourselves make complete sense when we develop them. We build those structures to protect ourselves, to avoid making mistakes that once felt too significant to risk. But when the conditions feel safe enough, those structures can soften on their own. We can start taking risks, speaking a little more freely, accepting our own imperfections, and in doing so, perhaps reconnect with a younger, freer self, one with their own distinct voice and instincts, and a very clear sense of what they want to create.