Over the past few weeks I have been taking Flora Bowley’s Bloom True ecourse and I have been loving it. Today marks the last week in the class but thankfully that doesn’t mean we have to finish up our paintings this week!
I first heard of Flora Bowley when Kelly Rae Roberts took one of her workshops in person and posted about it on her blog.
When I first found out about the ecourse, I strongly hinted to my husband that it would make a great birthday present. Let’s face it, he could get it for me as a birthday present or I’d just end up enrolling for it myself. Birthday present it was!
The largest canvas I worked on previously was an 11 x 14. In this class, the bigger the canvas the better! I purchased two 24 x 36 canvases and one 36 x 36 for the class. As the start date of the course approached, I was trying to figure out how to set up my canvas for ease of painting and I remarked something along the lines of, “So this is why people have big easels.” Since I only had a tabletop easel, I propped the canvas against the wall on an old 3 legged side table, taped some plastic to the wall to protect against paint splatter and went to town – my set up wasn’t very pretty but it was functional.
The following weekend I headed out of town for a small retreat with my women’s circle. When I got back home that Sunday afternoon and walked by my studio, I was surprised to see a large easel in there! While I was gone, my husband spent the weekend making the easel for me. I was SO surprised, especially that he built with while I was gone for less than 48 hours. It means so much to me to have his handy work help me with my own handy work. I envision years of using this easel that he so lovingly and thoughtfully made for me.
Flora’s painting style comes from a very intuitive place. Over the past four weeks she has gently encouraged us to stop outside our fear and embrace the “ugly phases” in our paintings. She acknowledges that this process can bring up emotions for people and not only is that OK but it is perfectly normal. We are all on a journey and wherever we are in this journey is absolutely fine.
For the first two and a half weeks of the course, things moved along smoothly for me. I was painting a few times a week and keeping everything lose. It was one big experiment and these early layers would more than likely be covered up with other layers. Then as we approached week three I had to suddenly go out of town due to the passing on of an elderly family member. At the same time, the gears were switching in the course. We started looking at what inspires us and it was time to add some imagery in our paintings. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve focused on “working with what is working”, reducing down our color palette, etc. This is where it got harder for me. It was all easy for me to “keep it loose” in the earlier stages but as the painting progressed, I could feel my own emotional struggles bubble up.
I currently have two paintings in progress and I continue to add layers, still unsure of how it will come together. It can be difficult for me at times but I keep going, trusting the process, adding layers and seeing where it leads me to next. I am grateful that the course content is open for 6 months. I have a feeling I will be watching a lot of the videos again in the coming weeks. Watching Flora paint is both pretty mesmerizing and inspirational.
If you missed out on the first round of the Bloom True ecourse, do not fear! Flora has another round set to go live this June. Happy Painting!
