A Flow of Art
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on May 12, 2022.
Art admirers were mesmerized by the vibrant colors and swirling textures of Anna Pittman’s alcohol ink art featured in Pitman’s Saturday exhibit at Deer Park Farm’s Shanti Meditation Hall in Pilot.
One attendee of the May 7 event asked Pittman how she goes about creating such patterns.
“Did you use a brush?”
Pittman said the paintings were moved by her breath, a straw, a hair dryer, or maybe the pads of her fingers.
Director of The Breathing Space, Pittman offers online Hatha Yoga classes and teacher trainings, meditation and self-awareness programs and classes, as well as counseling and coaching out of her home in Blacksburg.
She had never made art before immersing herself in the alcohol ink medium with the challenge of doing one painting a day as a meditative and therapeutic practice that she refers to as “play.”
Pittman said she doesn’t know ahead of time what will be created, but once a theme emerges, she goes with it. Occasionally, she uses a stencil, a permanent marker, a foam sponge, or she overlays acrylics onto her work, which she describes as an emerging process that involves following a fluid flow.
For more than a year Pittman has been posting art with titles like Morning Musings, Big Moon Night, Spring in Progress, Beauty is a Message and more on her Facebook page, where she sometimes asks her followers to suggest a title. “I feel like in ten years, I’ll be where I want to be,” Pittman said about her emerging art process.
Various sized paintings done on photo or yupo (a synthetic paper made from polypropylene), some framed and some applied to canvas, were offered for sale by donation at the exhibit. Attendees enjoyed a spread of refreshments that included teas, tomato cheese bruschetta and roasted vegetables from the Deer Park Farm’s gardens. __________Colleen Redman
