On my desk this month…

I belong to an online creativity group called Creativeish. Recently, some of us have taken part in a collaborative creative swap. Within pairs, we both created something to send to the other person. We then each responded creatively to what we had received, again sending it. I was paired with Prinith, who sent me the picture above. The title of ‘Team’ that she had given it challenged me, as I am beginning to build a team for a new project starting in the autumn. For weeks, I looked at the painting and wondered what I might paint in response. Finally, I put paint to paper and the picture below is what I sent her.

I wanted to build on the theme of team, and I was thinking about how a team can do beautiful things by working together. Keeping with the idea of a sky in the original painting, I chose to paint different paint tubes coming together to paint a rainbow representing a team working together. I then echoed the birds in Prinith’s original painting in the top right hand corner.

It has been a challenging and enjoyable project. The challenge came in deciding what to paint each time, wondering how the person would receive it! The sending and receiving was both fun and a blessing. As well as the joy of giving and receiving, there was also the joy of a different type of interaction with someone in the online group. The creating and exchanging of art through the post with one other person was an opportunity to get to know one person in the group a little bit better. I’m now looking forward to us all getting together online again to share our swaps with the group.

In case you’re wondering what I created originally to send to Prinith it was of a teardrop - an image that I often use in my paintings. I forgot to take a photo, so can’t share it here. The response she sent me in return was another teardrop, that she had decorated with a mendhi style pattern.