I’m continuously reminded while painting, that black is never just black, and white is rarely white at all.
I won’t give away the whole piece just yet, but if you look at her “black” coat, it would be nothing without the shadows, the light, the movement — all arriving in shades of living. It’s the same with her hands, her “white” hands are pinks and purples and grays and more.
I used to love to roam through the constant assembly of coats in my grandparents’ farmhouse. Of visitors and helping hands, they hung equally. I wouldn’t have seen it, had I not rubbed my face through sleeves. From afar they draped in winter drab, but up close, they were every color — altered by work, by wear, rain, sometimes snow. Through holiday and honor, they offered a palette that said, (no not just “said” but lured), “come in, see the colors of what is being felt, from face to heart.”
I suppose I’m still getting the call. From heart to canvas to word. I have to answer. If not, what was their entry for?
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.
I finished the book Pachinko yesterday. When I went for my walk in the afternoon, I started listening to a podcast about the World Creative Director of Disney. He began the interview by saying that if you have read the book Pachinko, you would understand his history. (Sometimes the universe is quite obvious in letting you know you’re on the right path.) There was no one else around, so I smiled to the birds in the sky, thinking surely they, too, must feel a part of it all.
I don’t know that I really believe in coincidence. I think the more we put ourselves out there, the more vulnerable we are, the more we connect. All of this knowledge, this exposure to others, to books, and art, and music and science and creation — perhaps these are the feathers that lift us. The wings that give us a better view.
It was a joyful walk. It seemed to pass more quickly than usual. I remember smiling, but I don’t recall the ground beneath my feet.
It is said that John Steinbeck had a writing ritual with Blackwing pencils. In order to not waste time while he was in the middle of writing, he would sharpen 24 pencils and place them tip side up in a pencil box. Next to it would be the same box, but empty. He would take the first pencil and write until it became dull, place it in the empty box tip down, and take the next sharpened pencil. His advice, “Repeat this, until you have the Grapes of Wrath.”
I laughed when I heard it. I laugh when I tell it. But the truth is, that’s really what it comes down to, simply doing the process again and again. I suppose it’s true for everything. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. I can’t say that I will write the next epic novel, or hang in the Louvre, but I want to be the best that I can be. To get better each day — this I suppose is my gathering of Grapes. My ritual of art. My daily practice. Some may say that is simple, and I’m fine with that.
She wrote a comment on a post featuring my Grandpa. She said she always admired him. That he was kind. That my Grandma brought them sandwiches. That times were simple – but she could see, feel the love in that. (And that was the greatest compliment, I suppose.)
So I use my pencils. I clean my brushes. I write and paint and post my “sandwiches.”
I have raved through the years about my banana seat bike — the flowers on the seat and basket that could have been delivered from the “Laugh In” set by Goldie Hawn herself. The brightest of pinks, yellows and blues that brightened the gray transition of the end of March, when I received it for my birthday. But I didn’t get there directly from my red tricycle. There was another bike. In between. It looked almost homemade. Perhaps it had been Frankensteined from neighborhood parts gathered in the back shed. It was gray and white. The pedals almost worn down to the stub. It only blurred into the gravel that I was learning upon. Dropped and abandoned in ditches, it still was the one that took me to the brightened glory of the banana seat.
And just as forgettable, I suppose, was the three speed black bike from Sears that in-betweened my banana seat and my electric blue 10-speed. And didn’t I park that bike in the furthest rack away from the playground at Washington Elementary? Not quite ashamed, but close enough that it pangs my heart still.
Maybe it takes awhile to see the value of the things that get us through. It’s easy to celebrate the milestones and forget the random Sundays. Our city is mostly shut down today because of an Iron Man competition. I can lose these hours pedaling feverishly toward Monday, or I can choose to enjoy them as the gift given. I hope I do. I’m going to try. These are the words I’m learning upon.
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.
It’s easy to misread anyone I suppose. Up until the fifth grade, I was extraordinarily quiet. I wouldn’t have put it that way, but that’s what they wrote on my report cards. My mother, not seeing anything to defend, replied, “When she has something to say, she’ll say it.” I sat beside her, cheeks flushed and smiling, I nodded. The teacher, once again misreading the room, looked at my face and said, “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” My mother knew what the pink in my cheeks meant. “She’s not embarrassed, she’s hopeful.”
We ripen at different stages. I found my voice. I still get nervous. I get angry. I get tired. Sometimes sad. Sometimes so much joy that it’s overwhelming. And it all blushes out my heart and through my face, because through it all I am hopeful. I am hopeful that I will understand. That I will be happy. That I will pass on all that joy for others to carry.
Sometimes he looks at me and says, “Nice colors.” And I know he sees me. Just as she did.
I can’t tell you how or why I started painting French birds. No more, I suppose, than I can remember the first time my mother said, “Let’s go shopping.” Some things just take on a life of their own. And now I joyfully find myself wing deep in berets and stripes.
Maybe it’s the unlikeliness of it all. We had no money, and not much of a mall. No history passed down from my grandmother. No gps in our car. No google – no computer even. Just the pure desire to dress our way into lives we knew our hearts were already living. So we gassed up the used Malibu and wore a path on I-94. Passing fields and billboards as if winged ourselves. And we found ourselves at the Dales. Ridgedale, Southdale, Brookdale even, when something just needed to be found.
I see it now more clearly. How we fit striped tops over our wings and found our way. Found ourselves.
Here in France, because my mother dared the freeway, I find myself in front of my sketchbook, and I am not lost, but ever wing deep in joy.
It’s one of those things, hard to define, but you know it when you see it, when you see them, people at ease, comfortable in their being. The lack of tension in the body. I saw it in my grandfather, the leaning in. My grandmother, the letting out. I continuously try to paint this feeling. Mostly to remind myself — a reminder not to carry, to strain or keep. What I need will flutter in. What I don’t will fly away. And there is beauty in both.
Visiting our relatives in Kansas City, I experienced something special with the music. Maybe it’s the way with jazz. This letting in, and letting go. A lovely freedom. Not confined by paper or recording, but simply played — for the first time, and perhaps the only. And to hear that, a sound that simply rests on shoulders for but a moment, you feel a magic that was never meant to be contained.
I suppose it’s the same with love. With life. This letting in and letting go, with the grace of no restraint. No protection. When I remember this, I release, I relax, and let the music play.
I sent my friend the picture of this newest bird. Still fresh from my hands, she traveled across the globe to gather in the best compliment. Her reply was, “She’s a fancy bird. Very Ivy-like.” And my heart is still beaming.
I had promised my grandmother that on my best of days, my very best, they would see her, and they would see her daughter. And I don’t always get it right — even in my “best” attempts, but I keep trying. And when you call it out by name, call them out by name, it is all the love that shines.
And isn’t that the best we can do, wear the pearls that we were given? The pearls of wisdom and strength. Of laughter and joy. Of survival and grace and courage. When we give it all a name, we have a responsibility, to witness and uphold. To generate and pass along. And with that, those very pearls are given wings. And I feel the fancy flutter about and I think, I know, how very Ivy-like indeed.
