Playfully easy, but at the same time oh, so scary it is when Veslemøy Vangsnes challenges the participants on a painting course outside their own comfort zone. - It's about not being so afraid anymore, smiles Veslemøy.
Text: Ingrid Østang
Have you tried drawing with your left hand and eyes closed? Or just let the colored pencil live its own life on the drawing sheet, before you fill in all the squiggly circles and doodles with colorful chalk or oil pastels? If not, you should join a painting course with Veslemøy Vangsnes.
SEE WHAT HAPPENS
Veslemøy herself often finds that the finest pictures she paints are created when she is not thinking. At the same time, she knows that there is often a small threshold to cross before she gets there.
- Then left-handed drawing with closed eyes helps a lot. It's a great way to get away from the judging mind, so that afterwards I can just be and let the images come to me intuitively, she says.
She knows it's not always easy - she has experienced that herself in a stressful everyday life - but time and again she sees how the joy of painting can open up inner spaces of peace and expansion if only we dare. So when canvases and paintbrushes are conjured up, Veslemøy encourages the participants, including the undersigned, to be observant of the feelings and thoughts we encounter within ourselves during the weekend. "Write it down," she says as she hands out booklets about the primary colors and their myriad mixing potentials. It's just a matter of getting started. Soon we are smearing paint on the canvases, mixing it together with a broad brush, scraping it off and wiping it away in blissful chaos. Then we stick tissue paper on top of the paint and then pull it off again. "See what's happening", says Veslemøy - and that will be the slogan for this weekend. Because that's what it's all about all the time to see what happens be open, try something new, paint over and turn the canvas upside down. Don't be so afraid of making mistakes.
- I often challenge my course participants to paint over. Often it's about daring to let go a little and put on a new layer, only to discover that something you liked so much reappears when you scrape it off - just in a slightly different way, says Veslemøy.
She speaks from experience. She herself often paints on several pictures at the same time, so that one can be allowed to dry a little while she continues on another, before she can again explore what is hidden behind the layers in the first. But she has not always been as exploratory, neither in art nor in private life.
TURNING POINT
In fact, Veslemøy lived a very hectic life for a long time, with a husband, children, several jobs and little personal time. At the same time, she often felt a kind of longing for something more - without quite understanding what it was. 14 years ago she walked the famous wall:
- I was sick with panic disorder for almost a year. The cup was full, says Veslemøy.
After a year, she decided she needed to make some changes in her life. One thing was certain, and that was that the changes had to come from within. During the year Veslemøy was on sick leave, she went deep into herself for the very first time. Now she thought that what the anxiety really asked of her was to turn things around - from within. Some time later, she therefore began a one-year visual arts study at Steiner College. Something opened up in Veslemøy as creativity was given full scope, and when the year was over, she continued with art, first at home in the kitchen and then in her own studio.
- It took a crash for me to realize that I needed to change direction in life. When I then began to express myself freely through the paint, I opened up many more rooms inside. Not least, I have made contact with much more joy, she says.
She now loves to share this with others.
HOPE
And that is why she is standing here in this course room in Tønsberg this spring day, where we have painted, doodled and explored both on the canvas and in the inner spheres. For my part, I am faced with a dilemma of choice: Should I keep this subject I have just painted? It has such nice colours... Then Veslemøy comes up to me and kindly suggests:
- How about pouring the last coat of paint over it?
"Pour it all over?" I think critically, skeptically, fearfully. And right here I am out of my comfort zone. Not just on screen, but in life. “Am I doing something wrong if I paint over? Am I missing something? Does something break? Or should I really dare to think completely new here? Don't leave it as it is. Pour paint over, cover the old, then see what happens when I scrape off?”
- Okay, then, I mutter.
Then the paint flows over the canvas. Above the already existing motif. Over all the old stuff. It flows in red, it flows in yellow, it flows in white, layer upon layer and in circles on top of each other. Now Veslemøy brings the tissue paper, and I crumple it a little and press it against the canvas before pulling it off and scraping off a little here and there with a small plastic card.
And what happens?
Something new appears. Something unexpected. Is it a head, I wonder? A man? So exciting! I get engaged. Alive. Present. And feel that something inside me has changed. Something that longed for just this: to open up, let go and surrender to the new I don't yet know.
That's why she does it, Veslemøy. Taking courses. In a natural, playful and present way, she supports and challenges boats.
Because she knows it's not dangerous.
That there is nothing to fear.
If it goes wrong, we can just paint over it - both in art and in life.
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