#21 – Amour Clarté Confiance Shakti

This is one of my most intimate paintings, rich in layers – an inner journey which started in October 2015. Here’s the genesis of that painting that I documented over time. The meaning of the title will be revealed at the end of this post.

Amour & Clarté

It started a bit like the Garden of Eden, with jungle-like colours, including olive green, yellow and crimson red. Then it shifted as I felt a vibrant white light wanting to be painted, an inspiration straight from the Source.

Once it was there, I felt that this pure white “soul” needed to be surrounded by blue brush strokes, like a protective veil or gauze over the bones and flesh of the painting. It dawned on me afterwards that the white and blue are colours normally chosen to depict the Virgin Mary. To me, this layer is pure Love (“Amour” in French) and Light (“Clarté”).

I let the painting rest for several months in that state, not showing it to anybody, afraid of judgment – until I posted a photo on this website amongst my 2015 paintings:

Confiance & Shakti

The next layer of the painting added strength, earth and fire to what then felt like an ethereal, not quite embodied painting. This “embodiment” came through with gold added to the Light and then through a very earthy red, clay-like colour which I moulded with my bare hands on the canvas, as if I was a potter. As I did so, it felt like I was putting a protective layer, like skin over the bones, flesh and soul of the painting, a very embodied, confident, strong aspect of myself. Vibrant. Alive. With Trust, Confidence and Shakti – that pure feminine energy.

Warm and fiery as well. The fire can be seen in the flames that I painted with strong brush strokes of gold, orange and red here:

I also etched onto this earthy container some shapes, symbols of infinity and the texts of my favourite poems by Rainer Maria Rilke: Ich lebe mein Leben, Vorgefühl and Ernste Stunde (see original German texts and English translation at the bottom of my Inspiration page). Here are some close-ups of these texts, with the golden light shining through the etchings:

I then let the painting rest some more. It still felt quite vulnerable and raw to me. Not ready to be shown more widely either.

Final layer: Intimacy

I finished this painting off with an even more protective layer, an intense mix of deep prussian blue and more vibrant phtalo blue. The last layer is very structural, with a lot of brush strokes in the shape of squares, each side of the square representing a word of the quaternity Amour Clarté Confiance Shakti.

The rest of the painting is mostly hidden under this final layer – except for a little red shape which reminds me of what’s below and attracts the eye of the viewer:

The rest of the painting is mostly hidden under this final layer, where it is safe. A few etchings and extracts of the poems are coming through, like here:

or there:

My “Core Desired Feelings”

What do these words Amour Clarté Confiance Shakti represent for me?

This painting was inspired by reading and working through the book the Desire Map by Danielle Laporte.

Here’s a quote from Danielle’s website: Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have. Generating those feelings is the most powerfully creative thing you can do with your life. That’s what Danielle calls the “Core Desired Feelings”.

Yes, you’ve got it. In my life, I want to feel Amour Clarté Confiance Shakti.

Amour is for Love; Clarté is for Clarity and Light; Confiance is both for Confidence and Trust and Shakti is for the Feminine Energy. Not necessarily feelings as such, but these potent words have now been with me for over a year now and they are daily reminders of what I want to feel in my life.

So, a year after starting this painting, I now have a powerful reminder of what my own Core Desired Feelings are – through my own, intimate, creative process. It may not look like much on the canvas, but to me it feels very special.

Amour Clarté Confiance Shakti