Elemental: Heart Home

Lenten art exercises for tired people

Note: This was originally written 03/26/2021 as part of my Art Out the Dark newsletter. If you’d like to read the other posts in this series, you can read them all here.

The prompt from last week's class was to think about the places that your heart feels at home—or "heart homes" as my pigment foraging teacher, Heidi Gustafson, says of her favorite color-rich places. A heart home is somewhere you feel at home, but may not be from. I was developing an exercise around this, but couldn't quite land on something that felt right. And maybe that's part of the prompt: what connects you to your heart home? What represents that connection for you?

Try abstracting them out in miniature watercolor landscapes. Simply paint simple swatches of color that remind you of that place. You can paint a little rectangle of water first and drop paint into it to make it really dreamy. The goal is not to make perfect representation. Hold the emotional memory of what it felt like to be there. Like a memory, the image doesn’t have to be crisp, but when you feel it, you know it.

Another option is to lean into your inner curator to explore this question. Think about the tangible pieces you already have. Perhaps a collection of ticket stubs. Or cutting out pictures from a magazine. Maybe it’s a list of all the languages you learned to say “Hello” and “Thank you”. Or it could be looking at old letters and postcards. It could be as simple as making an album of photos on your phone. Whatever reconnects you to those spaces.

One place I feel deeply connected to is Japan. My friend, Brad, introduced me to the paper collage landscapes of Uchida Masayasu. As I looked, these pieces evoked a strong reaction of love for places I've been and hope to visit someday.

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