Capturing Calm with Yayoi Kusama-Inspired Infinity Nets

Discover Artistic Peace with Infinity Nets

If life feels too busy or your mind is chaotically full, I have a calming creative activity for you. Using just paper and a pen, we’ll create soothing, repeating marks inspired by Yayoi Kusama‘s mesmerizing Infinity Nets. This exercise not only offers a calming grounding experience but also forms a wonderful foundation for our upcoming three-part creative series.

Who is Yayoi Kusama?

Yayoi Kusama is a remarkable artist born in Japan in 1929. She has transformed her vivid hallucinations and struggles with mental health into inspiring art. Her famed Infinity Nets, endless fields of repeated marks, emerged as a way of calming her inner chaos.

Create Your Own Infinity Net

All you need for this week’s creative self-care is an art journal, or any paper, and a pen or marker. I’m using colored Sharpie-type markers on card stock for a sturdier base. In this week’s video I’m also using paint in a Dylusions journal. You can find more details about materials below the video.

Start by choosing whatever colors you feel drawn to. Both high-contrast and darker and lighter shades of the same color are effective.

Next, start making small connected marks on your paper. For my first ever Infinity Net I started with rather curved marks. The marks of Yayoi Kusama’s early Infinity Nets are dense. The textured brush stokes only reveal small hints of their background. In researching her pumpkins for a project at the library where I worked, I saw that they evolved into something much more defined in her pumpkins’ backgrounds.

However you choose to make your marks, and you can see me share various type in this project’s video on YouTube, it’s all about rhythm and repetition, not perfection, so let your marks flow naturally. And feel free to let them evolve.

Yayoi Kusama viewed her artwork as psychosomatic—healing for mind and body, and you’ll find that as you draw or paint each mark after mark, each helping you release tension as they steady your mind and soul. As you immerse yourself in creating these marks, you’ll notice how the repetition grounds you, like visual breathing. It’s an invitation into the state of creative flow I love, where the noise from outside and quiet. It’s where I find peace, and often clarity, in the chaos.

From Struggles to Healing

Art has been a valuable part of my mental health journey. I have not experienced overwhelming hallucinations, but have been lost in the despair of severe depression. Many of us know anxiety. We all experience grief and fatigue and overwhelm. Art-making was a big part of my recovery, and remains part of my mental-health maintenance. It provides an anchor. Even if it’s “just” simple marks on a page. Sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed. No-pressure mark-making.

Rediscovering Creative Health

We are innately creative beings, made in the image of the Creator. When we don’t take time to exercise our creativity in ways we find meaningful and enjoy, we neglect a key aspect of our health.

Taking time to make art is not a waste of time.

And Infinity Nets are are ideal—good for your mind and soul, and simple and easy to start even when you’re not feeling at all creative.

Looking Ahead

In the coming weeks we’ll use our Infinity Nets as a background for other motifs common in Yayoi Kusama’s work: first pumpkins and polka dots, then flowers. From a young age, Yayoi Kusama found pumpkins comforting. Next we’ll add the solace of pumpkins to the calmed chaos of our Infinity Nets, with Yayoi Kusama’s trademark polka dots. Have you ever realized how polka dots can’t exist on their own? Later, we’ll incorporate flowers, which symbolize both mourning and joy, fragility and celebration.

Connect

If you’re feeling encouraged to take some time to practice creative self-care with Infinity Nets, I’d love ot hear about it. Comment here or on my YouTube video. You can also sign up to invite me into your inbox from time to time, and receive a link to join the BETTER WITH ART online community private Facebook group.

You can also sign up to be kept up-to-date on upcoming online workshops and/or local workshops and shows where you can make art with me.

BETTER WITH ART is the home of my simple, low-cost, creative self-care art-making inspiration prompts. If you’re interested in watching other art I make, you can check it out on my Melinda VanRy Art channel.

Feel free to come hang out with me on Instagram and find more creative self-care encouragement on my BETTER WITH ART Instagram.

Hop on over to YouTube to watch this week’s video, and like, subscribe, and say “hello” while you’re there. Your support encourages me and helps spread the message that art isn’t a waste of time—it’s great for out mental health.

If you’re looking for new art supplies, you can also support BETTER WITH ART with your purchases when you use my Amazon and Blick links. Supply recommendations for this week are linked below the video.

Most importantly, make art. Because we are all BETTER WITH ART. Thank you for joining me, and I hope you find as much peace through art as I have.

MATERIALS

This week I used colored cardstock and a Dylusions journal.

The markers in this video are a large set of fine-tip permanent colored markers purchased for projects at the library where I work, and this project started as an Infinity Net and polka-dot pumpkin project at the library.

I typically use colored Sharpies. Some other favorites are my Amazon Basics Fine Tip Permanent Markers.

In the Dylusions journal I used Liquitex Basics deep violet. That’s an Amazon link, but I typically buy my Liquitex Basics acrylic paint from Blick Art Materials. Their prices are cheaper, but if you have Prime, you may not prefer Blick’s typical minimum purchase for free shipping.

If you use any of my Amazon links and make a qualifying purchase, I will make a small commission as an Amazon associate. This does not affect your price, but allows you to support my channel with your new art supplies. So, thanks so much if you do!

If you’d like to see more art materials I use that are available on Amazon, you can check out my slowly growing Amazon Storefront.