The Inner Artist Journal

✦ Why I Paint

I paint because I need to survive.

Painting is the place where I can still hear myself when nothing else makes sense. When the world becomes too loud, too fast, too filled with things that ask me to perform, to fix, to explain — I go back to the brush. It’s the one thing that doesn’t ask me to be anything other than exactly where I am.

Painting from the inside is not about making art. Although it can happen as a byproduct, It is about letting the inner landscape speak—without interruption. Without trying to make it pretty, impressive, or right.

This practice is simple. And it is daily. One image a day—small or big, raw or refined. You show up with what you have: a pencil, a crayon, old paints, whatever lives in your drawer. You let something move through you. Sometimes you return to the image, sometimes you don’t. But often, something will call you back.

At some point, you begin to speak to the image. Not out loud, not formally—but inwardly. You ask it something. Or it asks you. And this quiet dialogue becomes a thread. The image starts to follow you through the day. Or your life begins to follow the image.

What emerges is not just a painting—it is a visual diary. A living archive of inner states. A mirror of your becoming. The drawings become landmarks, memory stones, messengers. They show you who you were, and sometimes, who you are becoming.

We begin not with an idea, but with a feeling. A breath. A question that doesn’t need an answer.

Color plays a central role in this process. Because color bypasses the logical mind. It doesn’t need translation. It touches something directly—emotionally, viscerally. That is why this work often brings up so much. Because it goes deep. Like meditation. It settles you into the body and invites what’s hidden to rise—gently, honestly, at its own pace.

Through intuitive brushwork, simple materials, and the body's own intelligence, we begin. Without pressure. Without critique.
This is a sacred conversation—with the parts of you that seldom had a voice. With the memories stored not in words, but in shape and hue. With the pieces of self that long to be seen.

Sometimes, what arrives is messy. Sometimes, it’s barely visible. Sometimes, it surprises you with its truth.

The Practice

This work weaves together:

• Daily intuitive drawing or painting — creating space each day to meet yourself in image and gesture.

• Visual journaling as a mirror — the images become a living diary that speaks back to you over time.

• Color as emotional intelligence — bypassing analysis, color goes straight to feeling and somatic memory.

• Deep presence through creative ritual — painting as meditation, as return, as sacred pause.

• Simple, everyday tools — no art school, no fancy materials needed. What you have is enough.

There is no finished product here. No critique. No comparison. Only you, showing up for what wants to move through you today.

If you feel the pull, you already know: this is not about learning to paint. It is about remembering how to listen.

A Sign in the Dark, The moment I sat down to write this text, a bat flew into my house.

Not through a dream — through the open door in my Joglo. Big, black, quiet.
It started flying in circles, right above me. And I just sat there and watched. I didn’t move. It didn’t either. We were both in the room, like we were supposed to be.

I don’t need to “interpret” that, really. But I also know what that means. I’ve worked with dreams too long not to feel it.
The bat is night. The unconscious. The instinct that sees in the dark. It doesn’t come to decorate a story. It comes when something shifts.

And that’s exactly what this practice is.
A shift.
Something coming in that you didn’t invite, but you know it has something for you.
Something old, hidden, precise.

So I stayed. And I kept writing.