Painting as a Way to Slow Down – How My Thoughts Grow Quieter with Every Brushstroke
I often experience the world very intensely. Colors, scents, moods, all of it tends to reach me a little louder than other people describe. And my thoughts can grow just as loud. I tend to overthink. Often I go through the same questions again and again, turn every perspective over once more, and search for a solution or an answer that sometimes cannot be found at all. It is a kind of brooding that rarely stops on its own and instead keeps circling the longer I give in to it. Over the years I have found a place where these loud thoughts finally grow quieter. It is nothing grand. It is the sheet of paper in front of me and the colors beside it.
When My Thoughts Grow Too Loud
When I sit down, I rarely plan what I am going to paint. I reach for a color that feels right and familiar in that moment, almost as if the color were choosing me and not the other way around. The louder the thoughts in my head, the more forcefully I paint. The tones become more intense, the movements of my hand quicker and more abrupt, sometimes almost a little angry. That may sound restless, but it is exactly this restlessness that is allowed onto the paper. It does not have to be beautiful, it just has to come out. And then something happens that I could not explain to myself for a long time. With every further brushstroke the thoughts grow a little quieter, until at some point I notice that I have thought everything through in peace, entirely without meaning to. Sometimes that takes several paintings. On some days I paint one motif, set it aside, begin the next, and only with the third do I feel that it has grown still inside me. By then it is no longer conscious thinking, more a quiet processing that my hands take over while my head is finally allowed to let go. Often I get up afterward and am surprised that a whole hour has passed that I barely noticed. What remains above all is a calmer person. I am actually rather impatient, and my head usually demands that a painting really be finished, all or nothing. But in moments like these I am allowed to deliberately lower my expectations of the work. Then nothing has to be finished, then all that counts is that I feel lighter afterward.
When a Single Color in a Box Is Enough
It does not always take a whole painting. Sometimes it is enough to simply place colors into little boxes and paint no real motif at all. Then it is not about a result, but only about my hand having something to do and my eyes having something to look at. That alone brings a surprising amount of order to my head. Often I have deliberately set myself a small task for this, for example updating my color chart with the overview of all my tones. That sounds like a duty, but for me it is the opposite. Especially in stressful times I could return to the colors again and again for a few minutes, without having to worry about a concrete motif. There is no right and no wrong, no expectation of a finished work. Only color, water and paper. That alone is often enough to breathe more deeply again.
This sorting in itself is something many autistic people experience as deeply soothing. My children arrange colors, very small autistic children line things up by size, someone sorts the cutlery in the dishwasher, and a friend of mine who is autistic recently told me that she arranges pebbles by color. There is a quiet satisfaction in being allowed to arrange something the way it feels right from within, rather than the way it is dictated from outside. When I place my colors into those boxes, I am essentially doing exactly that.
Every Color Carries a Feeling
That I reach for one particular color is no coincidence. For me every tone carries a feeling of its own. Some colors feel loud and demanding, others quiet and comforting, and still others remind me of a very particular time in my life. When I reach for a familiar tone in an unsettled moment, it is almost as if I were reaching for a mood that I need right then. I have written before about how colors feel to me, and that sense stays with me even when I am not painting a picture at all, but only spreading the tones out in front of me. Perhaps that is why painting is for me less a matter of creating than of sorting. I lay the feelings side by side, mix them, layer them, until they form an order I can live with again. What was a single tangle in my head suddenly takes on a shape on the paper.
Why Not Yoga or Meditation
I am sometimes asked why I do not simply do yoga or meditate when I want to find calm. I have tried, more than once. For yoga I often simply lack the strength after a long day. When I meditate, my thoughts are too present, and I cannot manage to let them drift, no matter how hard I try. Watching a series rarely works either, because as soon as it bores me I reach for my phone as if on my own and start controlling and producing again. And simply sitting still is unthinkable for me anyway. Perhaps it is because all of these things ask me to do nothing. And that is exactly what I am not good at. My head needs something to hold on to, otherwise it goes looking for the next problem. When I paint, on the other hand, it finally gets a task that fills it completely without overwhelming it. It is being occupied and letting go at the same time, and that particular mixture I find nowhere else.
What the Hand Knows
When I paint it is different. The movement of the brush or the pen keeps me with it for thirty or sixty minutes, entirely on its own. I do not have to force myself to stay with it, my hand takes that over for me. It knows how much water the color needs right now, when I have to wait a moment for a layer to dry, and when the next stroke may come. In this small, ever recurring sequence there is a calm I cannot find any other way. It is a doing that takes up my attention completely and yet asks nothing of me. I do not have to achieve anything, I may simply do. I hear the soft sound of the brush moving across the paper, and I see how the water joins with the pigment and begins a life of its own within it. In moments like these I am fully in the now, without having set out to be. Perhaps that is also part of the answer to the larger question of why we still paint at all.
Why It Has to Be Flowers
I am sometimes also asked whether painting calms me because something disappears or empties out in the process. I would not put it that way. On the contrary, I find it far more exciting when there is something beautiful and tangible to discover in a motif. Colors and their effect fascinate me to this day, and flowers give me so much more than a landscape. A landscape holds little information for me, even though it too is nature. A blossom, on the other hand, tells me something with every line, with every curve of a petal, with every transition from one tone into the next. Flowers are also always positive, whether dramatic or delicate. For me they are the laughter, the joy and the passion of the earth, and that is exactly what I love to capture on paper. Unlike a portrait, a flower is also completely free of judgment. It demands nothing, it judges nothing, it does not look at me. It is simply there and is allowed to simply be beautiful. In front of a flower I do not have to do anything right or live up to anyone. I may look at it in peace and come as close to it with my colors as I manage to on that particular day. Perhaps I even need this intense perceiving before something can relax afterward. A little like progressive muscle relaxation, which of course I have also tried. First tense up and perceive consciously, then let go and allow it to settle. When I paint, the blossom is what I first take in with all my intensity, and the letting go comes almost on its own afterward. Why flowers of all things, I have written about more fully elsewhere.
When Calm Turns into Pressure
As much as painting carries me, not every day in the studio is easy. Preparing the packages is a great deal of work every month. There are motifs to design, painting sessions to record and cut, content for social media, the articles for the magazine, and finally the printing and the shipping. When I push it ahead of me and do not stay organized, it piles up and at some point hangs over me like a dark cloud. And being creative at the push of a button does not always work. There are days when the colors do not speak to me and my hand does not know where to go. I have learned that this too is part of it and that I cannot force it. Sometimes what helps then is exactly what I described at the beginning. I sit down, swatch a few tones, and wait until the cloud lifts a little.
Back to What I Have Always Carried Within Me
And yet I try to see precisely this work as something good for me. Because here I do not pretend. I use what I have always carried within me anyway, for as long as I can remember. No matter what I have done in my life so far, I have always returned to my creativity, as if it were the only place where I am truly allowed to be myself. With the studio I am now able to live it quite consciously, and I am very grateful when what comes of it also resonates with other people. Perhaps that is the real slowing down. Not switching off and not emptying out, but arriving at myself. I believe that many people need such a place, where they have to do nothing and yet do not simply have to stand still. For some it is the garden, for others the kitchen, a long walk or making music. Especially with neurodivergent people I see many parallels to art in this, because there too it is about an intense perceiving that is only afterward allowed to flow into something calm. For me it has become the paper. And if you yourself cannot find calm at some point, it may be worth the attempt to simply reach for a color that feels right in that moment, and to see where your hand leads you.