By Morgan Coulson, MCP-AT
Ottawa, ON

My painting process is largely intuitive, and abstract. I often begin with an impulse or a feeling, a “handle” for a felt sense. Sometimes it is a shape, sometimes it is a colour, and I often find myself returning to similar handles time and again. For instance, both the circle and the moon are recurring motifs in my personal work, often symbolizing cycles, nature, spirituality, and overall, connection in some form or other.

In addition to the painting process, I also often write about my works after completing them. Sometimes immediately after, but it is often after I have given the piece time to dry and it feels complete to me. To simplify the writing process and make it easier for me to begin, I usually start listing elements that I see in the painting. I begin with line, shape, colour or movement, and see what associations arise as a result of looking at the piece, then listing what I see and feel. Once started, I often dialogue with my art and ask various questions of it, waiting for an answer to form in my body or my mind. The final result feels like stream of consciousness, and I very seldom go back and edit what I have written.

For this special edition of Envisage, I have submitted a series of paintings I have called Pandemic Moon I and Pandemic Moon II, as well as the accompanying writing I completed while reflecting on the paintings. I began by writing about Pandemic Moon I, moved onto Pandemic Moon II, and eventually wrote about the two of them side by side.

To me, the combination of these three pieces speaks to my process as I move through our current global landscape. I have found through my life and my process, that tuning into and making space for complicated, seemingly conflicted experiences has been the only way for me to truly flourish. To hold space for and honour the darker side of the emotional spectrum—the pain, the grief, the anger, and the longing—does not diminish, interrupt, or overshadow the joy, the love, the gratitude, or the playfulness I experience in my life. They can and often do live in tandem, sometimes even in the exact same moment and instant. To embrace this complexity, to connect fully to my humanity, and to recognize that the fear of a feeling is often worse than the feeling itself; this is in many ways a large part of my life’s work.

These pieces, to me, represent two phases in my emotional landscape as I move through today’s global climate. There is a darkness, and a heaviness – an “everlasting sadness,” as I wrote in my journal. But there is also a lightness, a hope for rebirth and new growth – an “everlasting sun.”

No feeling is final, and I welcome this cycle in order to flourish and grow even as I shelter in place.

Blue and green. Gold. Splatters.
Mix. Dark and light spot.
Rough wood. Imperfections. Rough surface.
Splinters.
Hard to paint.

Usual process interrupted, more difficult than usual.

Messier – less contained, but still safe. Still nestled
within the comforting shape of the circle.
Circle.
The moon. A pandemic moon – changing and inconstant
but constantly in cycle nonetheless.
Nature.
Patience. Sky.
Reminds me of Reykjavik. When will I be able to return?

Will I be able to return?

I long to return to the world and to nature, and also I feel safe here.

I feel held and loved by the universe, the earth.
She’s here, even just in the patches of green between pavement.
I am safe here.

Night sky.
Maybe?
Perhaps twilight over a patch of green earth.
Lighter. Not quite night yet.
Spring. Beauty. Calm.
New growth pushing up through the dead of the old year,
the old life.

Everything is changed.

Everything should change, be unlike it was.
Safer.
Fairer.
An increased appreciation for the slow,
the tuning in,
the birdsong,
and what really matters.

What really matters?

Does anything?

I hear this question often—
in the death tolls, mounting and declining but mounting numbers,
in the voices and faces of those I see from a distance or a screen.

Yes.

Yes!

If nothing matters, then we chose what does.

What matters? The earth.
Our connection to her, ourselves, each other.
Hope.
Rebirth.
Reconsidering and reorganizing politics and policies.
Love.
Life—all lives—
inherently worthy and good and loving.

It’s not all good, but it is all worth it, in the end.

I made this in connection and laughter with loved ones.
Voices coming in on airwaves from far away.

It is all worth it to me.

It feels like the painting is singing to me.
What’s the tune? What’s the song?

I can hear it now—

“There is an everlasting gladness of the heart
The stranger looks at me and loves me as I am
One day I stand upon the river's sacred shore
And feel the sun, I feel the sun

There is an everlasting sadness all around
It's bigger than the news, from this you cannot run
A woman's magazine, a column in the mail
Can't help you now, can't help you now

I love the summer birds, they sing no word of lie
The air is cruel, the frost will cast them as they fly
But glorious the sun returns to wake the year
They show no fear, they show no fear
They show no fear” —There is an Everlasting Song, Belle & Sebastian

And now, the second painting.

“Creating and analyzing are two different parts of the process.”
Tried not to think too hard, tried to keep that in mind.
Tried not to create and analyze at the same time,
to trust the process and take my time.

Rougher still than the other, messier still and less contained.
Dark, though there is no black and the base is white.
(The other’s base is grey).
Red and raw sienna, almost red purple.

Demands to be looked at closely, not from afar.

It’s not very “pretty.”

A mentor once told me, “sometimes we do not paint beautiful things,
because we are not talking about something beautiful.”

This, this is not beautiful.
(Remember to breathe).

The green looks gray black. Brown. Sienna.
Red, red, vibrant red.
Dots of white.

I mixed and mixed and mixed with my fingers,
not the brush.

Do you need anything?
(Wait for an answer).

“No.”

Are you complete?

(Wait).

“Yes.”

Are you okay?
“No, not entirely.”
Can I do anything for you?

“You already did – you made space for me, too.”

The two go together, different as they are.
Two sides of the same coin, two phases of the same moon.

The dark one makes me feel like crying,
the blue one relaxed in awe and comfort.
They are both connection, they are both true—
I am making room and space for both of their truths.

I love them both. They love me.

They have nothing to say to each other, just a mutual respect,
an unspoken understanding and appreciation for the other.

There is an everlasting sadness.
There is an everlasting sun.

Both true. Both, at the same time,
in the same instant.

The birds are singing and the moon is shining as I write.
A waxing gibbous.
Expanding.

Expanding capacity to hold it all.

How auspicious.