Surrealism art Beena

I began dabbling in art starting with acrylic painting sometime last year during the start of lockdown in 2020. It began as a way to spend my time. Being a new skill, I found I needed to focus and to me this was akin to meditation. Of course, for serious meditators it must be a joke. Besides it was challenging.

By October of 2020, I had shown some of my work to friends and one of them suggested I should try watercolour. I was clueless and bought a set of watercolour paints. However, I was struggling with my painting. In December, I found an art class that would teach adults. I was like a little kid again and was so excited each time I went to my weekly once class.

There was so much in watercolour art. I decided to write my experience with my journey in exploring my watercolour world as I realized that many of us are not aware of the different styles.

I begin about Surrealism. Yea, this was a cultural movement that began after World War I in Europe, with visual art and writings. Surreal means fantasy or dreamlike. The term was coined in 1917 by Guillaume Apollinaire. By 1920, the movement impacted visual arts, literature, film and music in many parts of the world. In fact, it impacted political thinking and practice, philosophy and social ideology.

I am not going to delve into that more as my idea of introducing this concept was to describe 2 of my paintings that I had done.

The first painting is Ms Harriet. Now Ms Harriet lived many years ago in Felinland. In her world, she is a teacher for kittens. Feline parents would drop of their kittens to her class so that she can cat sit them while they go about on their business. Ms Harriet creates games to keep the young ones busy while she prepares their food. Her dress is knitted by her using wool. Now isn’t that a fantasy story 😊😊.

My second painting is Delphi. Now Delphi is a dolphin who loves to show his skills. In this painting you can see that he has managed to jump over the clouds. This again illustrates that in surrealism there are no limits to our imagination. We can unleash our creativity in every form without fear.

Would like to know your thoughts on the rise of Surrealism. It’s a very interesting concept. My thoughts are during times of extreme hardship its wonderful to escape from harsh realities. Let our fantasies take flight and bring forth a sense of living. Hence in keeping with our theme of 1000storiestogether, let us unleash our imaginations of the