i have a unique front row seat to paintings in process. running downstairs to throw in another load of laundry or seek out a tool i need, i will glance at the easel in the studio to peek at what’s up next…this time, the sketch of two people dancing made me stop. it immediately made me thinking of when we have danced in the front yard or the kitchen or out on the deck or on a mountain trail. i got lost in the tango and wandered back upstairs, no new laundry spinning in the washer or tool in my hand.
the next time i looked at the easel i found these two people emerging and color exploding off the canvas. i have learned, in this time of living with a brush-in-hand-artist, that this is the under-painting, a place that involves steps at which i often want to tell him to stop!wait!it’s perfect! sometimes he does – stop. other times he keeps going, for the vision in his mind’s eye is beyond what is on the easel and there is more to develop.
it’s a unique place in the front row. maybe more comparable to back-stage or the green room or the recording studio before “record”…a place of preparation, a place of reflection, a place of swirling beauty, a place of possibility, a place where the-painting-someone-dreams-of-hanging-on-their-wall is being born.
standing in a stand of aspens. simply magical. the way the leaves quake in the wind, the glowing bark that takes on the angle of the sun, the graceful spiring height. and the quiet. on a trail in the woods, the backdrop of the rockies peeking between the trees, i breathe easier, deeper. i feel in tune with that place; its voice speaks to me. i whisper back my gratitude.
a few years ago, after my tealight-vessel-throwing-on-the-wheel experience, i felt like i still needed to express myself in another medium (other than music). as much as i adored the idea of throwing pots, the cost of the clay and studio time was not in direct proportion to my level of ability; it was time to put that aside till the budget was flush and i could return to the pottery studio without counting pennies. a tealight vessel (ok, there were a couple tealight vessels if you must know) and one lonely bowl were a total joy but it was clearly going to take some good-long-time to get better on that wheel. demi moore (in ghost) made it look easy. it is not.
and so i went to the art supply store and bought a huge canvas. the biggest one they had in stock. the kind with a deep side (1.5″). i brought it downstairs to the workroom and searched around for paint. since i am not well-versed in this area (to say the least) i selected a can of black paint and a can of white paint. both household paints. latex. semi-gloss. i searched around for one of the old brushes i had been using to paint furniture and i set up my “studio”.
day after day i would go downstairs to look at this spot in the basement. i could feel my excitement gathering. i had no idea what i was going to do with this canvas, but it was ready for me. until one day, indeed, i was ready.
i stood before the canvas and began to paint. i brushed on paint. i threw paint. i spattered paint. i painted over paint. time fell away and i kept painting. i’d walk away and let it dry and then return (this doesn’t take very long with household latex…long enough to pour another cup of coffee or glass of wine) and i’d paint some more. i’d stand back and i could see what it needed (at least what my eye said it needed.)
and then, i knew. it was time to stop. i didn’t know where it was going, but i did know when it was time to stop.
now, i can’t say if the cost of the canvas and studio time were in direct proportion to my level of ability, but i can say they were way less than what my heart felt. these moments, gathered together, a storm of inspiration, fed me.
this painting hangs in the hall in our house. when i sent a photo of it to a friend of mine right after i was done, scordskiii wrote back to ask whose work it was. i told him it was mine, laughing and apologizing for it. he was appalled by my apology and made me promise not to apologize again. so now there are a few more in the living room. arriving after these paintings all had their dedicated spots on the walls of what-is-now-our-home, david, the real painter in our house, said he loves them. i’m always invested in real art made by real people, regardless of the genre, so i love them too. not necessarily because of what they look like. but because of what they made (and make) me feel.
i can feel the sun over my shoulder, low to the horizon, warming the back of my head. in front of me the field of cut-grain takes on the color of the sunset and the sky darkens in answer to the summoning of nightfall. the color is intense; the darkness is perforated by the suggestion of clouds, maybe stars…maybe it’s too early for that, i wonder. i want to walk up the hill to see what color might lay there, what color might be beyond that which i can see right now. but i stay still. and listen to the crickets in the grass, the cicadas in the small stand of trees behind me, the sigh of day’s end.
the little mermaid music swirls in my head, “under the sea, under the sea…” i can’t help it. the gorgeous brushstrokes of blues and greens and deep reds inspire thoughts of beautiful oceans full of color and hues that are untouchable by dictionaries far and wide. this morsel, from the painting EARTH INTERRUPTED VII, i titled AQUA AGUA MIT ROUGE, a name derived from several languages (english, spanish, german, french), a nod to the inability of words to describe it.
this morsel is somewhere underneath this beautiful painting – within the depths of EARTH INTERRUPTED VII – not visible, but part of the underpainting, a layer of, well, the earth. how much more perfect could that be?
every time we get a text from david or molly with a picture of sweet dawson coloring i believe i see an artist-in-the-making. he is intense, all not-even-two-years-old of him. his crayons seem deliberate choices, his drawing coming from a place inside that beckons him to the paper, the cardboard box, the canvas. it’s innate.
charlie is a second grader. he practices batting every day. he has ground down an area of the backyard so much that seth thinks there will never be grass there again. charlie can cite all the players on the kansas city royals and their stats and he will narrate his own one-person ballgame in the backyard, an announcer with great animation and accurate details. such a small person with such a big passion for the game. it’s innate.
khloe, a teeny but mighty seven year old, would come up to the chancel each week and john would let her play the drum set. she didn’t pound, she didn’t arbitrarily hit drums or cymbals. you could see by the combination of joy on her face and an expression of concentration that she was pretty serious. she has the beat. it’s innate.
when my sweet beth and i talked on the phone she said, “i’m not sure how i feel about her going into music.” she was talking about her older daughter, who already has been cast as the lead in three plays this coming school year. i don’t think she has a choice. for emme, it’s innate.
each of us spokes-in-the-giant-wheel come into this world with something. something that is just ours. ours to do. ours to bring. it’s innate. already in us.
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we often walk at the end of the work day. we go inland to a lake trail and walk a couple times around the lake, somewhere around 6 miles or so in total. we mostly hike around the lake clockwise, which means that we are watching the sun come down across the lake at the beginning of our walk, a time when we are still processing the day and haven’t yet gotten immersed in the trail. sometimes we are so engrossed in talking or thinking-silence that we have to remind the other to appreciate…”look at that sunset,” one of us will say.
sometimes we will get up early and, with our coffee mugs, go sit on the rocks and watch the sun come up over lake michigan. every time we are witnesses to the beginning of a new day this way i think we should do that more often.
sunrise. sunset. it makes me think of the song from the musical fiddler on the roof. it’s truly a beautiful song, simple, sung with great heart. the passing of time. so fast. wendy wrote to say it was time to bring logan back to college – for his second year. i could so so feel how that felt, remembering times i had brought My Girl or My Boy back to college.
“Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older When, did, they? When did she get to be a beauty? When did he grow to be so tall? Wasn’t it yesterday when they, were, small?
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset Swiftly flow the days Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers Blossoming even as we gaze Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset Swiftly fly the years One season following another Laden with happiness and tears.”
(Sunrise, Sunset – by S. Harnick, J. Bock)
life somehow fits in between these sunrises and sunsets. and somehow, some days, we just seem to miss it. too many things to do, to worry about, to perseverate over, to check off lists. every time i vow to honor the sunrise and exhale with the sunset, somewhere in between i realize i forgot. i’ll try again tomorrow.
SUNRISE. SUNSET. a morsel from the painting A DAY AT THE BEACH
one summer, (almost) every single day, i took The Girl and The Boy to the beach. not the beaches on lake michigan, for the water there is way too cold, but a beach that is inland in our town and is man-made. that was the summer-of-the-best-tan and the summer i loved packing and re-packing our beach bag, a small cooler with drinks and snacks and buckets and plasticware and shovels for building castles in the sand.
they were littler then and it was easy to keep them happy on the beach. when The Boy was reeeally little, he, like his dad, did not the feeling of sand in his toes. he preferred to stay on the blanket or the beach towel. but at this time in his life – the-summer-of-the-beach – he loved it. he played in the sand and the water as much as every child there, including his big sister and me.
looking at this morsel SANDCASTLE WITH ME from the painting SPOONS AND SANDCASTLES makes me want to go back. go back and do it again. repeat that summer. play in the water more. have more icepops from the refreshment stand. stay late until the sun was almost directly on the horizon. and make more sandcastles.
