Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…


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Miss Chatelaine.

Could my mother hit a proper note? Not that often. But OH, how she could carry one! I loved to sing with her. To fill up an empty Sunday afternoon with song…lyrics and melodies that weaponed, staved off even, loneliness or doubt… music that set aside the worry of beginning a new week, and just let this moment hover, gather, and embrace in the now, well, that was pure magic, in any key. We sang from the depths of our souls, asking the questions, demanding, willing, daring the answers to hop on notes and dance in the air.

I could tell the mood by the cd that was placed. K.D. Lang’s “Ingénue” would start with the why, and end with the why not. Questions were asked, “Where is your head, Katherine?” “Why hurt yourself?”. Into soul pleading realizations, fists clenched, bent at waist, head raised to the air, “Fate must have a reason. Why else endure the season of hollow soul?” I couldn’t even hear Miss Lang over my mother’s journey of survived and victorious anguish. And then she would become, I would become, Miss Chatelaine. Because having lived through it all, each improper note, didn’t she, we, deserve the becoming! And so we would! No longer bent, but reaching. “I have lived just for this…” Yes! Sweet and glorious yes! “I can’t explain,” we sang, “why I become Miss Chatelaine.”

I have been listening to, well, singing along with, this album while painting all of these women. And I think maybe, as I sing the words, as I dance the paint brush, all of the becoming, from my mother’s voice, to mine, to the painting, all of the notes sung by heart, (and by heart), live inside these portraits, and when you look, really look, you see her, me, yourself, and all of the beauty, hope and desire. And whether you call it by her name, or your own, you become….you become Miss Chatelaine.

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Leaves and bird wings. 

Even in the dead of winter it was vital for my mother to be able to open a window. When ice crept inside, gathering strength, sealing wood to wood, impeding her much needed freedom, she armed herself with the ConAir blowdryer that I bought in the 9th grade, and blew her window and eventually her heart, wide open. 

Maybe it was the swinging of the summer screen door at my grandparents’. Or my mother’s head out the nearest window. But I, too, have found the meaning of home, not by looking in, but looking through. 

Some may think you’re safe by closing it all down. But you’re not safe, just alone. I always assumed it was only about breathing. But she said she liked to hear it. What? I asked. Life, my mother answered. There was always hope in the sound of the living. A car door. Footsteps. The distant train. Leaves and bird wings — they became the sounds of her own beating heart, and she was saved. 

I open the morning shutters, and I am home. 

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That’s really beautiful!

We went to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition yesterday in Aix. Sometimes you need to see things again and again, to see them for the first time.

Of course the actual pieces of art were beautiful. But why were they beautiful? These prostitutes. This windmill. Seeing the actual photos of the women next to what he painted, took my breath away. Not because of what he saw, but wondering if I would have. Would we have seen it, all this beauty, had he not pointed it out repeatedly? And I suppose the same could be said about the Sainte-Victoire, the Cezanne-celebrated mountain also in view. If he hadn’t painted it throughout his life, would it be just another giant rock?

I guess that’s our job. As artists, sure. But as humans. We have to find the beauty. In the most remote places. In the unexpected. And point it out. Again and again. Celebrate it! Until no one can walk by without thinking, that’s really beautiful.

And didn’t my mother do that for me…long before I grew into arms and legs, or heart even. Long before I even checked the mirror, she gave me a reflection of love. Of real beauty. And I felt it. Feel it, to this day.

Because of my grandfather, I can see a field of gold as art. Because of my grandmother, an apron is to be revered.

I started another painting. Maybe this is the one where you see yourself. How lovely you are. I will keep painting until you do.

We can show each other the magnificent ordinary, daily. No ticket required. All admission free. Welcome to the beauty.

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Becoming verbs.

It seems when I know you, really know, you become a verb. 

To make my favorite cookies, I have to Grandma Elsie my way through the recipe. We don’t have brown sugar here in France, so I make it by adding an undisclosed (even to myself) amount of molasses. If it seems like a lot, I add more flour, or adjust the butter, all by heart and eye, just like she did. Never measuring anything with hand, only taste. 

It was my mother who verbed her first. If I fell asleep in a chair, she would say I was “Pulling an Elsie.” And the comparison brought only delight. 

It’s funny how we are adjective driven. (And who doesn’t want to be pretty?) But I think the real admiration, the love, comes in finding the acts of the person. Because love is active. In constant motion. And to get pulled into the verb of it all, well that’s a dance!

My friend Loie is a dancer. My Grandma Elsie baked. When I saw the two paintings together, their worlds collided. Nothing similar but the love. So today, when I “Loie” myself around the studio, or “Grandma Elsie” my way through the kitchen, I will know that I am returning the love that I have been so joyfully given.

…and so she would dance.

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Fidelity.

The amount of fidelity cards we have from store to store, has not only made it impossible to remember the codes, but it has almost rendered the word meaningless. 

It’s not lost on me though that I do like the concept. This loyalty to brand. This adding to your account. And it occurs to me, perhaps I’m doing that in my studio each day. With each portrait. Building equity with those I love. It is a daily investment to be a part of something. A risk to say that you are a part of it as well. Some will try to shock with the paint stroke. Dare you to see what they see. I have never been one to think I could startle love into action, but there is audacity, I suppose, the audacity to think, to hope, if you could see me, seeing you, then maybe you could see the love in that. 

So I add another punch to my Orsolini card. That has to mean something. My heart knows that it does. 

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Allowed to play.

I suppose my first canvas was the empty lot between our house and Dynda’s. We had free rein — perhaps trampling as if we were on horseback. There was artistry though in the games invented. Bases made out of abandoned windbreakers. Rules sculpted from the last competition remembered. Our knees and elbows painted green from the weary grass meant to be underfoot. And oh, how we played. We worked that canvas until no summer light remained — and still five minutes after that, as our mother’s called from bug danced porch lights. 

I had that feeling yesterday. After all these years. All these miles. It was getting later in the studio. But I was six years old and running. I was paint stained and racing toward the base. Each stroke on the canvas brought the joy (not of winning — but being allowed to play). My feet jimbled beneath my hands that danced in front of my belly that quivered — leaving my brain no choice but to say, “just five more minutes!”  

They say you can’t turn back time. Can’t stop it. During the night a rare rain storm fell over our house. Going into the kitchen this morning, I could see the light blinking on the oven clock. Of course it was the lightning that took out the power for a moment – that’s what my brain says. But my heart winks at my hands and thinks, maybe not…

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My solid ground.

“If you opened people up we’d find landscapes.” Agnès Varda

When I fell from my training bicycle, riding down the hill on Van Dyke Road (at my brother’s urging) I was opened up from chin to knuckles to knees to shins. I was certain that if I weren’t bandaged from head to toe, the neighbors would be able to see directly inside of me, revealing every thought, hope and broken promise. 

Right from the start, all of my feelings were worn close to the surface, and without skin, well, wasn’t it obvious? Having survived this grand opening, perhaps I never saw the need to hide myself away ever again. Each day when I write, when I paint, a little credit must be given to the gravel of Van Dyke Road, the first to offer, demand even, my vulnerability. 

This landscape that I carry, I must admit has often gone uncelebrated through the years. Buried beneath the dazzle of mountain and beach, of lavender field and golden grain. Can you even ask a gravel road to outshine the Champs-Élysées? And yet, when called upon, when skinned to my very core, or delighted to the same, it is there. To hold me. To lift me. To be my solid ground. 

My husband often laughs that I always have something in my shoe. It just occurred to me, perhaps it simply fell from heart. 

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By heart.

Mrs. Bergstrom stood at the front of the first grade class, the “times” tables rubbing off onto her shoulder from the blackboard, and she told us that we had to “learn it by heart.” Always one to feel a little more than perhaps necessary, I assumed she meant everything from here on out. I still do. 

I’m a firm believer that the heart can, and must, override the hands’ hesitation. 

I can’t think of anything where my heart didn’t first convince my brain to urge my hands to continue. From painting a portrait to baking a cake, I am grateful for my hands every day, but even they are well aware of who’s leading.

Painting her yesterday, I could feel it. I know that fear of moving forward. Risking it all. Being vulnerable. But I also know that I won’t get stuck there. I will lean in. As I always do. I will brush away the shouldered what ifs, and take my elementary self, by heart, into the music of the day, and I will dance. 

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From the shadows.

I think I get it now. What he saw. What wasn’t yet there.

The commitment of painting flowers begins in the shadows. In the black. I suppose the desire will always be there, to begin with the popping of the petals, but it’s impossible to paint that way, backwards. They, like all of us I suppose, have to come through. 

Finishing the larger of the two paintings, I was there. Not just in the shadows, but in the dirt. The black dirt. The empty field, with my grandfather. 

I was always amazed at what he could do. Taking the black, turning it to green, and then gold. What I thought was magic, was maybe artistry. Or maybe they are one and the same. Maybe that’s humanity itself. Being able to see beyond. To sit what isn’t yet there. 

Could I be painting the flowers without his vision? Or my grandmother’s in the kitchen. Or my mother’s in her closet? Maybe I only see, because I was seen. I awake from the shadows, because of them. 

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Within reach.

My mother did not like a flimsy dishrag, nor dishtowel. Her hands could handle the most extreme conditions of the hottest water, so why would she expect anything less from the material within reach?

It wasn’t this alone, but she was constantly teaching me how she needed to be treated, and how to treat myself. It was down to the smallest detail. Decisions were always being made. What are you worth? What do you expect? What do you need?  And to see her find the joy, wringing it out, hanging it over the faucet, as a job well done, ready for tomorrow’s task, it still makes me smile. 

I finish the painting. Rinse out my brushes. And carry that same joy. 

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