The only thing I remember about art from growing up is those big pieces of manila paper we got to use at school sometimes. Only sometimes, though, not very often. I don’t ever remember making anything important or fantastic on that paper, but I loved the possibilities the blank sheet posed. I loved that we would soon get out our crayons and have some time to use them freely. And even though I also remember feeling inadequate and clumsy as an artist then, I remember the feeling of excitement I felt when I saw the paper out of its normal resting place in the hands of the teacher and ready to be distributed to the class. I think someone must have told me I wasn’t much good at drawing then because that is what I believed and I don’t recall anything I did from those years. But I still love that kind of paper and the promise of freedom it brought.
When I became a mother I promised myself that my kids would have paper and crayons and scissors and tape and markers and paints available always. Just in case they had the courage to try to create something. And they do have courage.
In college I took an art class. For one project I covered a large poster board with maps, then sort of cerulean blue washed over the whole thing, added some purple tissue paper collage and did some raised outlining with a bright yellow colored something or other. I really liked what I had done because it was creative for me, and I had used some of my favorite things: maps, yellow and collage technique, plus I had allowed myself to be completely free with it. My instructor didn’t like it, although I don’t remember why. It didn’t matter much to me because it pleased me, what I had done. But I think his dislike discouraged me.
Once cold winter day in Catalina I decided that I was finally going to just paint. I took some paper and watercolors down to the water and sat there in the cold and painted. It wasn’t very good, and I was freezing cold and worked for a long time, but didn’t really like what I had done, except for the subtle pinkish color that I was able to achieve in the white puffy clouds. But mostly it looked like a very wooden, amateur painting done by someone who did not know how to paint. Which is what I was, so I was not disheartened at all.
My best and most truly amazingly rendered artwork ever was a watercolor painting I had done one early morning in college (probably in the midst of finals, as these stressful times often led me to either sleep a lot or try to create something). I had received some homegrown pink roses from a man with whom I was obsessed at the time the night before. They were a sort of an apology from him, and represented to me the hope of romantic success and the ability to continue on with my obsession. Which brought me great joy and courage. Enough to attempt to paint what the roses, anyway, which was quite a lot. I had never even thought of painting roses before.
I remembered what I had been taught in a drawing course that I had taken only briefly about looking at the line, but not thinking about what the line is, just trying to draw the line as it appears. So I did that. I did not tell myself that I was going to draw or paint roses. I just began trying to copy the line of each petal and then I painted, again, not thinking about painting roses, but simply attempted to mimic the colors I saw. There was pink with subtle orange. I loved what I had done. Loved that I had done it, loved that I had been patient and thoughtful as I did it, loved the way it turned out.
Unfortunately obsessions can mess with one’s sense of propriety and at the sad but inevitable ending of our twisted relationship I not only chopped off all of my hair, but ripped this little painted memory to bits. Dang.
Creating art seems to me a way of being able to get at some of what lies within, to bring it out into the world without needing to explain. A means to display some hidden deep beauty that life’s hard knocks have rankled with, then locked away.
A painting or drawing or knit thing seems more subtle than language, my former first love. Writing seems so harsh to me now; to put the pain into words and onto page completely unappealing. I’ve got books full of the sad stories of my life. I want to burn them, to somehow make them inarticulate.
I wish to make art instead. Perhaps it will be more accurate a picture of me, the me who is still here, still hoping and dreaming, still breathing despite it all.
I think maybe I have finally grown tired of the tedious, ineffective verbal catharses of my life.
But I still have something more to prove, only this time I will use paint, color, texture. Maybe a few choice words, but mostly not. Mostly just beauty. And orange and yellow and red and green. And blue. And white. Probably not much black, though. I really don’t like black, except clothing. Finally figured that one out.
So this is why I started this blog. To document my journey from talker to artist. I hope.
