I wanted to follow up on the last blog post before I started to minimize the significance of an epiphany I had yesterday evening, which prompted both this posting, and the previous.
Last night I was working on a painting for Hot Summer Nights
at Arbor Crest in July. This is the
largest piece I have done, and I am committed to its finish. After working on it for several hours, I sat
down and looked at my progress. And then
it hit me.
Like a baseball bat.
Like a ton of bricks.
Like a nuclear bomb.
Her words rang clearly in my head.
“Focus on painting.”
Staring at this enormous canvas tilted on my easel, I saw
it for the first time. What she saw. What I couldn’t see. I saw it now, but she saw it then. In the
beginning. At my first show.
She must have said it to me more than once, during different
occasions. Otherwise, I would not have carried this advice with me, in the back
of my mind, over the course of this past year.
“Focus on painting.”
I was put off. Couldn’t
she see what I saw in my pastel drawings?
Forget that she hated my frames, brightly colored,
mismatched and haphazard.
“Focus on painting.”
I wanted to rebel.
I wanted to rebel.
I thought she was just being bossy and condescending; using her
artistic and literary credibility to act superior.
I procrastinated.
I kept playing with pastels.
I kept playing with pastels.
I begrudgingly and intermittently painted.
I don’t know when it happened, but I found myself painting
almost every day; my beloved pastels collecting dust.
And last night, I saw it.
And I understood.
She saw something in my paintings not yet developed, and of
which, I was unaware.
A depth, she said last night.
Last night, staring dumbfounded at my canvas, I realized she
was my friend.
Aren’t you glad I said that, she said last night.
Yes.
Yes I am.
No comments:
Post a Comment