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.”
I have had this canvas for about 15 years. It has transitioned and traveled with me through abstraction and country. The last painting was here in France, a seascape of sorts. But I can’t tell you exactly what came before that. I know it’s still there. Underneath. Behind, within this woman.
If you ask me who she is, prepare yourself for the underpainting. She is the curve of every woman.
She is my grandmother whose hands never stopped. Hands that I watched in amazement and wrote, “If she did worry, it never showed in her hands. She held. She gave. She touched.”
She is my mother. The posture of grace. In an apartment kitchen filled with more worry than nourishment, she lifted a hand, and gently directed me in the dance.
She is my friend, long past her days of professional dance, who still walks in the garage as if onto the stage.
She is another friend, deep in grief, (a depth that only comes with love) who dares the dance of my mother, and releases, again, and again, with the curve of a woman.
When I look at the sides of the canvas, I see these bright and dark colors. Not who she is now. Not who I am now. But I see the lines of the underpainting — the embossing and debossing of all that paint (the experience) that has come before. And it adds pattern to her dress. Movement to her hands. Strength to her feet. And opens the sky. Opens her heart. My heart. Your heart. Wide open.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
