There’s always a risk, I suppose, for both parties, when being seen. And when I say that I’ve studied the arts, the masters, of course I include the instructions at university, the museums, the books, but long before any of that my mother was giving a master class at Herberger’s.
So graciously she added the fourth perspective as her peers stood in front of the three-way mirror. When it was good, oh, she praised them. But when it wasn’t, she didn’t fall in line with the store clerks, she gently offered, “I think we can do better.” She knew the right colors. The right fit. What to enhance, and what to hide. How to create the best presentation, without a stumble.
When painting a portrait, I gather it all in. From the Dutch. The French. The Italians. The Herbergers. And while that may sound a little funny, oh, do we need the masters now more than ever! I think about her daily. My mother’s whimsical and gentle grace. Then I see the news. I see the actions of people. I see the reflections of negative, cruel, and frankly, simply ugly people, I stand here, draped in my mother’s wisdom, and say, “I think we can do better.”
Today I get the Paris Review. Each one a treasure. Words and pictures. Stories and poems. A world held in the palm of my hands. Often clutched to my chest, as if the turning of the pages could not insert deep enough. You could think that it was simply the couture of all things France, but I will tell you, that I felt the same in our unfinished basement on Van Dyke Road in Alexandria, Minnesota, chubby hands wrapped around the newest issue of the Reader’s Digest.
Seeking relief from summer’s heat, I curled into the damp cool of the cement, and traveled my way slowly, armed with the directions given in the previous school years, from Mrs. Strand, Mrs. Bergstrom and Mrs. Erickson. I sounded out. Acted out. Laughed out loud to gather in the medicine the funny section claimed to offer. Lived out loud on every page.
And the thing is, it didn’t tell me my future. But it gave me the assurance that I would have one. Each letter a small taste of what was to come, if I dared the turning.
I don’t know what this day will bring. It may be the Reader’s Digest version of something glorious to come, or simply the cool comfort of what is. Either way, I will be saved.
The underpainting is not just the forgiving support of the image to come, but it is the voice of the story to be told.
I ordered a book from the company Blurb. The easiest narrative to relay would be how the first book was damaged. How the carrier screwed up the delivery, twice. It practically writes itself with all the usual suspects of annoyance and waiting, and disbelief and angered conversation. A real yarn to spin. But is that my underpainting? The real story that I want to tell is the final outcome. The book is beautiful. Blurb was fantastic to work with. While that may not be as riveting, it rests well on my heart.
I don’t like the feeling of irritation. I don’t like carrying it. I’m as guilty as the next person, but I’m trying to do better. Of course to be a better person, but even just for my own sanity.
When creating a new portrait, sometimes I like to stop before finishing, while the person is arriving and the underpainting still shows through. This is where I give thanks. This is where I see all that I have been given. Without my grandparents, my mother, my teachers and friends, (my forgiveness, my support) I would have no story to tell. They, you, are my underpainting. So I pause. Show you, so you know that I know. You rest well on my heart.
It was my mother’s best color. Of course she looked good in it, but there was more to it. We didn’t have google to ask why. It was enough to simply feel it, the power of turquoise.
“Use what you have to get what you need.” I tell myself this daily. But how do you get an afternoon with your mom, when she’s not here? What do I have to make that happen? I have paint. I have time. I mix the blue and the green. The calmness of the blue, settles and gathers and the green promises the growth of all things to come. And wasn’t that what I longed for, the hug and gentle release of my mother. The open window tells me it’s all still within reach. And I sit in the power of turquoise. And I am saved.
“America is my country, and Paris is my home town.” ― Gertrude Stein
I started discovering myself long before I moved to France. My mother saw to that.It wasn’t so much that we went on vacation when I was young. But we did travel. With neither plan nor map, we drove. When we stopped for gas, my mother placed one foot out the door. By the time the second foot landed she would say yes or no. This was not a judgement so much as a choice. And not whether she would actually fit in this place, but whether she wanted to. Visiting nearly all of the states, I won’t give you the list of “no”s. There were hard yesses throughout the country, but the easiest of these came in New England. One small, elegant, cultured town after another. Streets lined with freshly painted houses. Groomed lawns. High fashion behind screen door porches. Lobster on paper plates. Accessible luxury that not only agreed with her, but was her. I don’t know why we love what we love. I’m not even sure it really matters. I guess the most important thing is knowing when your are in the middle of love’s embrace. When your feet stop and say, “we’re here!” When your heart beats louder than any reservation your brain can come up with. When you don’t just feel alive, but you feel the fresh warmth of being born, again and again. When the only word is yes.
I have a recipe for bread. I can make it in a cocotte (a cast iron French oven), or I can make baguettes. Same ingredients, but different taste. I can’t tell you why it’s true, but only that we love it. When the scent rises with the morning sun, I am my mother’s daughter, driving on paved streets of the familiar unknown. I am still my country, but I am home. I slice the steaming baguette, add the butter and honey, raise it to my mouth, and say, “yes!”
I watched her at the kitchen table in complete fascination as she snapped open the yellow containers, L & R. She wet her fingers with the solution and placed the tiny disc between her thumb and middle finger, rubbing them clean perhaps, but more likely, I thought, working up the courage to place it in her eye. I held my breath as she balanced it now, her hand slowly rising. With her left hand she held her eye open, bringing the other closer and closer. Of course they had made her do it at the eye clinic, but this was her first solo flight at home. Would she do it? Could she do it? She blinked furiously, leaving her right hand under her chin in case a catch would be needed. But it stayed. Her blinking slowed. She smiled and I smiled. Holding in our victory lap as she plucked the other from its case and placed it. I blinked along in solidarity and cheered with both arms raised. She was my hero. My astronaut. My ever “I’ll go first, but I’ll never leave you behind.” I always made sure that she knew how I saw her.
I suppose I’m still doing that. Daily.
In the blink of an eye, it was all gone. That table. That house. But not the love. That remains. And I will always let her know.
Words are nothing until they leave the page. I suppose the same is true for love.
Someone was always jumping from something. The overpass. A bridge. The roof of a barn. While I can’t say that I ever would have followed — (we were often asked that question, “if the neighbor girl jumps off a bridge…” and for the most part we didn’t take it literally) — but still I understood the need. The need to fly from something. This need to take all the ordinary of Alexandria, Minnesota, the similar look of classroom and bus. This need to take all that was certain and sure and fling it into the wind and just see…see if in the letting go, we could simply fly.
People laughed when they read it in the news, or sat next to them in the orthopedic clinic, but there was just a tiny part of me that said, yep, I get it… as I turned to the blank page and poem-ed and painted my way up the side of the barn, dropping words and images like added weight, fluttering with excitement as I handed it over to my mother, vulnerable, and weightless, in that moment, in that glorious moment of trusting love, it was then I could fly.
It’s funny how it calms me. Being inside the risk of canvas. Of showing you. Who I am. It’s not my first barn. Not my first book. Nor canvas. But oh, how I keep climbing, because in this life, this love, I know, one way or another, I am going to fly.
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.
In 1938, Douglas Corrigan earned the nickname “Wrong Way” for mistakenly making a trip across the Atlantic from New York, when he was headed for California. I only know this because in the fifth grade, during an orienteering field trip, my team, after completing the wrong course, and also backwards, was awarded with our “Wrong Way Corrigan” certificates. I’m sure this is not the sole reason, but I have been making my own path ever since.
That’s not to say that I’m completely flockless. I have come to rely, appreciate, value and enjoy a wide array of people. And I know that I belong, but that doesn’t mean I always “fit in.” Fitting in asks you to change yourself so others accept you. Belonging asks you to stay true to yourself no matter what. This is what I encourage you to (forgive me) flock to.
So if you see me in the trees. In the sky. I’m probably the one wearing the beret, playing the violin, as most of the others sing. But isn’t it all music? Beautiful, sweet music teaches us, you don’t have to blend to belong.
