constricted freedom

i learned a number of lessons at the painting course:

1. it's impossible to immediately make the leap from denmark's most uptight environment to a painting studio on a collective. one will inevitably retain some of the uptightness.
2. the sort of concentration i've been doing over the past, at least 3 years, is a very different kind of concentration than one needs to paint.
3. a painting studio is not an outlook-run environment. this is a good thing, but it takes getting used to.
4. you cannot tell anything about anyone just by looking at them.
5. i must wear clothes that promote a sense of freedom.
6. the hazy ideas in my head are difficult to wrestle to the canvas.
7. the music that's playing while you paint is important.
8. need bigger canvases.

the other students were quite a collection of characters:

1. an older man, very quiet, very contained and a totally awesome painter.
2. a crazy, middle-aged chubby lady, also an awesome painter, but painting with her hands, very boldly and with awesome colors. paint all over her shirt and pants, hair all up rather crazily. clearly able to hear the music of the paint and move it around the canvas with a deliberation and freedom that i envy.
3. three old ladies who are clearly old friends, all 3 new to painting, but each very good in their own way.
4. a lovely woman from the faroe islands who is painstakingly painting the cliffs of the faroe islands in hues of purple and grey.
5. a 50-ish woman with an expensive haircut, painting with acrylics and a scraper on metal.

the teacher is, of course, a painter himself. dutch. been in denmark for 20 years. a charming character. very much a spirit of '68 type, with freedom to do whatever, there are no rules. he played pink floyd. that was cool.

next time, i will dress in clothes that can get paint on them and take a larger canvas. i will open up. of this i am sure. it will just take time.