Healing is a courageous and creative act, and also a privilege.

INTRO
I want to share here how my paintings helped me overcome hurdles.
I used to call my paintings Spells. The realization came later, though, when I understood that they acted as magic potions for me, and they were created to respond to a need.
All the elements in the paintings, as well as the colors, are like ingredients. Combined together, they have an effect on me.
The creative act is the spell, the final object the talisman.
When I started creating these paintings, I was already pretty self-aware. I had been in therapy for many years, talk therapy first, then more embodied approaches, as well as energy work. This is super important.
The first series I will present is dedicated to recovering from childhood trauma. The paintings supported me on my journey, helping me navigate high anxiety, terror, and all kinds of strange experiences, toward finding more balance.
This is where I am now, not in the eye of the storm anymore, but more grounded.
The moment I started creating these talismans, I mostly stopped identifying as a victim, and I stopped hoping someone else would fix me or make things better for me (mostly, hehe).
I started to know how to reach out for support when I needed it, while also knowing that I was no longer a victim and that my healing was in my hands. Which sucked a bit, but it’s the doorway to empowerment.
The question then becomes: how do I become empowered? How can I empower myself?
As I’m sharing this, I realize that my next paintings might not be so focused on healing, but rather on exploring energy in a more curious way, engaging with playfulness, for example.

Part 1 : LUMINOUS CHILD + rotatable piece  
Oil on canvas, 2022

When I created Luminous Child, I had just moved to a new city and a new country by myself, which was a challenge in itself. It was also a time when major trauma was resurfacing.
Something ironic about the healing process is that the more grounded and stable we become, the more we feel safe to feel, the more we open, the more heavy stuff starts to surface.
It can really feel like a double punishment: oh, I experienced this in childhood and it made me feel like shit, it crushed me, I suffered, and then, 30 years later, I realize I had repressed many memories, most of my emotions, and now I have to feel them. Ugh.
That’s what was happening to me. I felt more open, in a good way, and suddenly I unlocked a box full of very scary monsters.
For around a year, I spent half of each day experiencing deep terror, in a state that felt close to psychosis, although it’s hard to describe afterwards.
I truly had the impression that demons were sucking my blood, my soul, my mind, that I was drifting into another dimension.
 If you’ve watched Stranger Things, I would compare it to the Upside Down.
It felt like limbo, like I could stay there forever, rotting, and no one would ever be able to find me.
What helped me:
Colors became very important. I couldn’t stand dull colors or black. I viscerally needed bright, bold colors, especially in my clothes. I spent that year almost always wearing the same green trousers and bright blue cardigan and jacket. I accumulated a lot of pink objects.
I also pasted pictures of flowers on my walls and looked at flowers on my computer (it peaked in Winter).
Every day, I visited the same tree, a big willow, and spoke to it.
I recited mantras like a maniac (not exactly the “proper” way to do it, but it helped).
Inner child work.
I don’t remember if it was for 30 days or more, but for a period of time I did an inner child meditation every evening. It was not a guided meditation. Each day I asked my inner child how old she was and what she wanted to show me. Every day I told her, “see you tomorrow.” She shared a lot of emotions : grief, fear, sadness, niceness. It felt truly good.
The painting process:
I was in this Upside Down dimension, and I needed an anchor to the light, a lantern. I wanted to care for my inner child, to dig her out of this limbo. That’s what I had in mind when I started painting.
I chose the colors based on the effect they had on me.
The child is painted in luminous yellow, it’s bright, energizing, hopeful, sunny.This child,  even if she has to travel through a nightmare landscape, she is not harmed by it, she is protected by her light.
The bright blue and green of the sky and the grass energetically repel the lower vibrational energies of despair.
Around the child, I painted calendula flowers. They are flowers with a solar energy, which I associate with childhood. It’s like putting calendula balm on the wounds of childhood.
The plant also highlights the cycle of life, a reminder that nothing is permanent, and that what is rotten will feed the next growth.
Painting it made it happen inside me, as I was, at the same time, cultivating this luminosity within.

At the same time as Luminous Child, I painted this one:

The painting process was very intuitive and happened all at once. The idea was that if I felt myself slipping into the Upside Down dimension, I would rotate the painting to have the peaceful, grounding, loving landscape on top.
Once the painting was finished, I didn’t really have to touch the object. I could turn it in my mind.

Part 2 : VULNERABLE
Oil on canvas, 2023

This painting follows Luminous Child, although there was a year between the two. I painted many more things in between, but they were not charged with the same energy. They didn’t act as talismans, or spells.
After the Luminous Child process, I experienced a huge trauma release, facilitated by three sessions of craniosacral therapy.
During those sessions, repressed emotions and memories came back to the surface, and thanks to the practitioner, I was able to feel them safely and release them. This happened over a period of two months.
Afterwards, I felt like a hundred kilos lighter, and really really soft inside. I had just moved to the countryside, and I was spending a lot of time lying face down in the grass, inhaling the smell of the grass and the soil.
During my last craniosacral session, a memory came back to me. When I was around six years old, I was playing outside and I remember looking at the little green weeds growing next to a shed.. They were so bright green against the dark dark soil, and I found them so beautiful that I never forgot them.
The practitioner told me, “You know, those weeds, they showed you a quality of joy, they planted that seed in you.” And it felt very true.
The painting process:
As I felt so vulnerable, like a newborn baby really, I wanted to create a painting that would foster a sense of soft protection and nourishment.
In the painting, you can see me in the middle as a soft pink blob, a sort of newborn cell, utterly vulnerable, and who trustfully receives love and nourishment, without having to do anything in return.
The green shapes around me are the little weeds from childhood, that connected me to wonder and joy, and had a real healing effect. They hold me gently and infuse me with that quality of joy.
Around us is Hawthorn. I was in Brittany at the time, where many Hawthorns were growing. I spent a lot of time near them. They have those soft delicate flowers, and strong thorns to protect them. Hawthorn is also known as a protector of the Heart.
So here it is, protecting me in this vulnerable moment.
I didn’t feel the need to look at this painting very much, it was more about feeling it while I painted it, knowing I was safe and that this process was happening.
The plants were really there with me. I was talking to them, and they were present with their energy.
And of course, this process goes beyond the painting, by listening to what your body needs, and responding to those needs.
For example, at that time I often felt the need to drop to the ground, especially outside, onto the grass or the forest floor. Dropping, releasing all muscular effort. Being cradled by the forest.
I also wanted to eat baby food. It was quite a symbolic act, nourishing the baby in me. I bought those tiny jars of purée. I was living with ten people, and I felt very self-conscious about it. But one person told me they thought it was great, that by doing what I needed, even if it looked weird, it gave others permission to do the same for themselves.
Anyway, I opened two jars, they were really not tasty at all, so that phase didn’t last long. But it felt good to act on that need.
Sometimes, as adults, we have to go back  to our younger selves to heal something, but the process is accelerated.

Part 3 : THE RED WOMAN
Oil on canvas, 2023

There are so many layers to healing. We meet the same soft spots over and over again, deeper each time, and from different angles.
Hopefully, along the way, we learn not to sink, but to pass through. And each time, the process becomes a little faster.
I can compare it to walking through a haunted house at a funfair. We feel the feelings and keep moving toward the exit, instead of being paralyzed in front of the first ghost. We know we won’t be inside that house forever.
As I was feeling more solid inside, I was also able to feel my anger more and more. There was a lot of it.
Often, it was anger directed toward the same people. I also loved those people, so I felt very guilty for having those intense feelings toward them. On the same day, I would oscillate between anger, repentance, hate, guilt… It was suffocating.
It felt irreconcilable, and it was quite exhausting. I love them, but I am so angry. I love them, but I also hate them. But I love them.
At some point, I learned to replace the “but” with “and”: I love them, AND I am angry.
Instead of feeling tight, I started to feel spacious. I had room for both feelings, as they were both true.
My anger then became creative fuel, boundaries, and discernment.
I love them, and right now I need strict boundaries. At least for now.
I love them, and my Heart needs time to heal, undisturbed. In order to heal, a wound can’t be constantly scratched…
When it became clear that my Heart needed time away from anything that could reopen it, I did what was necessary and set firm boundaries with people I could not trust not to poke at my wound.
Being safe, my Heart could soften, and I could remove the blade that kept it bleeding.
This is what I represented in this painting. I painted this woman in red, the color of the root chakra, of anger, of passion. It’s a color I find very grounding, enveloping. It doesn’t hide, but it doesn’t attack either. It doesn’t feel like too little or too much, just assertive, taking its space.
I was still in Brittany then, still spending a lot of time in the forest. During winter, the presence of Ivy was even more noticeable, as it was the only green plant around. It would climb trees, sometimes strangle them, and its powerful grip could also destroy walls.
You can see me pulling the blade from my Heart, and the Ivy, with its strength and absolute determination, is reducing it to dust. The forest is processing it, flowers are blooming.
Behind me, there is a sunrise, showing that a new dawn is coming.

To be continued