I brought her outside to varnish her. The light was spectacular. She took on the warmth of all her surroundings. (Is that what love can do?) Even having given her those colors by my own hand, I felt like I was seeing them for the first time. This morning, when I opened my computer, it was the first photo that came up. As all of technology does now, it gave the location, but not by city or address, it simply said “Home.”
Because that is the truth. It’s never really about the street or city, it is the feeling. This place where my heart can rest and my mind can wander — both in this glorious light, this truth of being who I am. This place that is no longer about getting there, but becoming in… daily. That is a warmth that only home can bring. (And maybe that’s just love by another name.) I don’t need my computer to tell me that, I’ve already taken on the light.
Running feral as I did, from sun up to sun down, on the equally untamed gravel of Van Dyke Road, it’s counterintuitive, (and yet true), to believe that I never wanted to get dirty. Of course dust gathered on my once-only-white gym socks, creating a permanent outline of my bumper tennis shoes. This was unavoidable. But I mean really dirty, purposefully dirty, like when the Norton girl added more water to yesterday’s rain soaked garden and scooped the mud by hand into discarded EasyBake oven tins scattered in their back yard. “The horror!” I exclaimed to my mother, “Mud pies!” She, being ever crisp in her white blouses, understood completely, as she tried to rub out the wayward splatters on my shorts and t-shirt.
I still find a way to run wild, mostly on canvas now. I have specific clothes just for that. Yesterday, in the studio, K.D. Lang was singing along with each stroke. It wasn’t lost on me that I noticed the brown oil on my sleeve as she sang, “Wash, wash me clean. Mend my wounded seams.” And isn’t that what love does? Accepts us. Gathers us, in all of our commonalities, all of our discrepancies, washes us clean.Maybe this is what allows me to dare the palette. To navigate this beautiful mess we’re in.
She left them in my care. Her most crisp and white. It’s healing for me. Tending, wearing, my mother’s blouses. It mends my wounded seam, and keeps her near, through wayward splatters.
My cousins had a wood burning stove. Each weekend their family would, as they called it, “make wood” — which meant cutting down trees, then into usable pieces, then bringing to their house. When the teacher asked him what he did over the weekend, as was standard each Monday morning in school, my cousin said they “made wood.” The teacher corrected him and said they probably cut some, loaded some, put it in their trucks, but certainty they did not “make” wood. The next week when the question came around to him, “What did you do over the weekend?”, he answered, “We certainly didn’t make any wood.”
I thought about it yesterday as I began to finish the panel for painting. I cut the piece first in half. Sanded it. Measured to make the frame. Sanded those pieces. Glued them to the back of the panel. Clamped. Sanded again. Then Gessoed. For me, there is a real satisfaction as I rub my hand across the smooth surface, the smell of forest still lingering, traces collected on the tops of my shoes. Soon it will enjoy a new life. Become a painting. And while I know with all humble certainty that I didn’t make the wood, I do know that I am a part of it all — the nature of things. And that feels good.
It’s easy to get caught up in wanting to feel masterful, powerful, useful. I know I have caught myself thinking – I made that out of nothing. Certainly I didn’t. It began, as all things do, I suppose, as a gift. And the best thing, I think, is not to squander. Not to look away. But aid in the becoming. To be a part of it all, to humbly, joyfully, creatively, lovingly participate — that might be, well, everything.
Everyone is a different palette. I love painting flesh tones. It takes some time to get past the underpainting. The skin tone. The shadowing. The real joy for me comes when I’m blushing the cheeks. The ears. The flow of blood that gives life. Emotion. Heart. And I can feel my own cheeks warm in the connection as I put yesterday’s portrait in one of my mom’s blouses, and her golden hoops.
Quinn is graduating from high school. Her race is just beginning. I’m walking now instead of running. We are perhaps as different as the countries we live in. As different as these portraits. But I’d like to think we are all still connected in the blush. This pulsing pinkened hope that keep us moving forward. Still blended with what brought us here. An Ivy blush.
The last two days I have been practicing the painting technique of Alla Prima. It is the Italian name for “one attempt.” Using oils, you keep applying, wet on wet, until the painting is finished. The beauty lies in the moment. The absolute of the here and now. Not looking forward, nor back. There is no time to be too rigid or too precious. And it makes me wonder, hope really, that I can live like this.
If I approach each moment, knowing I get this one day, this one chance under this sun, to live, to love, would I get it right? Could it be more beautiful? Loving someone in the moment, forgetting the constraints of “you should have,” and “I was going to,” and “I’ll get to that later.”
It’s funny that the words of Eminem ring in my ear as I move the paint around the panel —
“You better lose yourself in the music, the moment You own it, you better never let it go You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”
The sun is coming through the morning window. Offering us the chance, the moment, the opportunity, to be beautiful. Will we make the attempt?
