I have an understanding with the Magpies. A crust of baguette from the kitchen window. Not the shiny object they are accused of coveting, but well lit for certain, under the summer sun of Provence. The exchange is met with chatter, and somehow we both know what feeds our soul.
This constant craving that keeps me returning to the studio — to paint again, for the first time — is me, magpie-ing that feeling. To find the face in the new portrait is to find a bit of myself. To dare going past that first stroke. To dare as well the letting go. All in search of the crust that feeds me.
The light in Provence is like no other. Perhaps I was unprepared at first, for this great reveal. (Are we ever prepared to really see things?) On the ledge outside the studio, I can view the colors I don’t even remember painting. Like a lost memory in the heart that says, “Oh, I’m ready to shine.” That is willing and able to admit that I’m not just black and white, but blue. To show it all is to risk it all. But I, like the Magpie, have come to brave the creak of the handle. The clank of the window opening. All for the taste of a slip of lavender honey on no ordinary crust of bread.
The light is calling. My heart chatters — I will not refuse.
Before there were air conditioned cabs on tractors, there was my grandfather and a lone tree left in the field. It provided much needed shade. A respite from the heat, and even navigation beneath the blinding rays.
They still surprise me, these unexpected trees. From Minnesota, to the south of France. And maybe even more so now, because they may no longer serve the practical, but still, they serve a need. Because even in all the comfort available, a little reminder is always welcomed.
He came home with a bouquet of lilies on a Wednesday. Unexpected lilies. Love can still surprise me. And find a way to grow.
A common criticism within the arts is that the piece is overworked. I suppose the same is true with most things. A poem can be too flowery. A batter over mixed. An outfit over accessorized.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned,” is a quote attributed to Leonardo DaVinci. It highlights the fact that perfection is unattainable and creative work is only completed when the artist chooses to stop and let it go.
So I stopped yesterday. On my large painting. And wasn’t it her hand itself that reminded me. You have to let go. It’s so easy to want to add a “but” in there, slip in a “maybe”… but maybe if I, or but I just wanted to… Here’s where I tell myself again and again… I don’t want to live a maybe life.
Sitting in front of the dancing woman, because letting go doesn’t mean you have to be alone, I picked up a small panel, and painted a duck. Some might say a small duck. But this was the duck that helped me move on, helped me feel accomplished in what I had done, satisfied, but not overworked. And as my mother used to say, “Nothing small could do that.”
At the moment my two most popular pins on Pinterest are of young women reading. It warms my heart that neither are distracted by the thousands of views and likes. Nor by the news that we are becoming a post-literate world. They can’t be certain of what lies ahead, but they continue. Fighting back, not with fist nor fury, but by simply reading.
There is so much noise currently. But there are things that still give me hope. An open window. An open spine. The quiet exchange of knowledge. Of truth. That you will take the time to read my simple words. And we connect, not over a ranting rage, but a common calm.
I quietly open the morning window. Taking comfort in knowing that hope always whispers.
I recently started a large canvas. The difference between this and a small one? Patience. There are no quick scrolls to the details. The juicy parts. The larger work must be complete. But isn’t that what I also love? Sure. I have to remind myself, but it is true. I liken it to reading an excellent book. You know the kind. Where the characters are living in your soul. Words that keep you fighting through nightime’s blinking eyes, and doing the dance between the urgency of your brain that wants to see how it ends and your heart that never wants it to…. It is the glorious and deliciously painful anticipation of falling in love with the canvas. Why would I ever want to rush that? So, patience…
Certainly we are given lesson upon lesson. I don’t imagine it was my first, but it was early on. Waiting for my grandma in constant conversation in the aisles of Jerry’s Jack and Jill. Cart by cart, she spoke to everyone. We’d just finish one exchange, and I’d think, hope, that we’d make it around to the next aisle, but then there, by the beef, or the boxed cereal, it would begin, “Oh, Elsie…” and we’d be locked in for another five to ten minutes. I’d like to think I was patient at first. Even accommodating. But I’m not sure it was very long before my shoulders started to droop. Before my head tilted backwards, as if my neck were no longer able to support it. My hand hanging on to the silver chariot, willing me to drag along.
And I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I can’t say why. Wasn’t the point to just be with her? I see it now. Caught up now in the whirl and twirl and scroll of it all, I simply want to slow it down. To love slowly. With attention and intent. To maneuver the days at the pace of Jerry’s Jack and Jill.
I don’t always get it right. So I lesson myself again. I stand in front of the large canvas. I pick up my slow paintbrush, and hear the words, “Oh, Elsie…”
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.
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.
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.
I had a customer request one of my older pieces. She said she looks at it every morning and wanted to give a print to her best friend. I sold the original years ago, but I still wake to the words on my heart each morning.
“It isn’t that something comes along and gives you a reason to get out of bed, you have to get out of bed and go find that reason, every day…”
I’ve always found discipline to be much more reliable than motivation.
I didn’t have the words for it then, sitting on the front steps of my grandparents’ home. The sugar still settling in my belly from one of the variety packs my grandma bought especially for us, I rested elbows on bare knees and rested bare brain in hands. My grandfather, not one to suffer fools or folly, making what wasn’t his first trip back to the tractor, asked me what I was waiting for. “I don’t know,” I said without lifting my head. “Better find out,” he said without turning back. “Yeah,” I thought, and raced into an open field of reasons.
There is always the sun. The morning. My hands and heart. I am out of bed, more than ready to find out….
I’m not sure when I learned it. Maybe on the school bus with wet hair, breathing so deeply. Holding blank, fresh notebooks tightly to my waist, to simulate the last hug from my mother at the garage door. “Be a big girl,” she said. Oh, I wanted to be. But then the Norton girls got on, all five of them, in all that comfort and bickering of a shared bathroom and last name. And I wanted some of that sameness, but I only felt more alone. I sucked in my lower lip, knowing that would be the first to go, to quiver. And I closed my eyes, willing the tech-school student bus driver to move, move… just get me to school and then I would be ok. I would find a friendly face in that circle as we sat on the cool floor. If I could just hold it in until, Cindy or Barbie, Wendy or Lori, or even Mrs. Strand, could smile at me and gather me in the warmth of “what did you do last night?” and “I’m so happy you’re here.”
I learned to hold it in. Mostly, I suppose, because I knew I had a place, a home, where I would never have to. I don’t know if it was the first time, but it was a time, and I was struggling, bubbling, simmering from lips to eyelids, and my mother asked me, “Do you need to cry out loud?” I shook my head yes. She sat me down. Sat herself beside me. And I did. And it wasn’t for long. I suppose when you’re allowed to let it all go, it can go pretty quickly. And I was saved.
And it wasn’t just tears. She gave me the safest space to do it all out loud. To dream. To hope. To become. To laugh. To sing. To try. I didn’t have to hide or wonder, brace myself or worry. I could just be — out loud, in living color.
I can’t say I never stumble. Never quiver. I can find myself looking back for her shadow at the door. And there are places and times when I know I have to hold it in. But freedom is never far.
We can do this for each other, you know. We can give one another the space to be who we are. We can join in the release of laughter, and tears — both out loud! And either way, we can be the one who says, “I’m so happy you’re here.”
