My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Peterson, said I see things like an artist. I've wondered what she meant.
As a child I could sit and draw or paint for hours, just for the joy of it. My biggest goal might be to show my mom when I was finished. Drawing things brought them into being. I think it was a way to bring the things I wanted into my life. Once completed I might sit for hours with the drawing or painting in my lap, not to admire it as much as to bask in its existence.
I stopped drawing and painting somewhere along the way. I think it had something to do with puberty. Then drawing and painting, along with everything else in my life, required a purpose. I had to be making it for something, for some reason other than the joy of it.
So other things came along with more pressing purposes, and drawing and painting were left at the side of the road.
I've picked them up again over the last couple months. I've ventured into acrylics for the first time and faced my frustration with watercolors. As a child I didn't care if my technique was "right" but I can't seem to find that simplicity these days.
Today I started a painting, my first attempt at a "real" painting. Christmas isn't far off, so Santa Claus seemed a likely subject.
My skills aren't where I want them to be, at least not yet. My washes come out with stripes and little cauliflowers pop up in unwanted places. My lines are not steady.
But a thought occurred to me today as I was painting.
As my dad was getting weak, as the cancer was taking over last Spring, I noticed a look in his eyes. It touched me. He looked old and frail in a way I had never known him to be. Today I was wishing I had captured that look; it is something I would like to paint.
Later I today stood back, examining the work I had done on this watercolor Santa that had consumed the better part of my day. And as I looked at it, I realized those were my dad's eyes.
I hadn't planned it. It was just something that came out as I painted.
I'm not an emotional person, but it caught me off guard.
I've always thought of artistic expression as something Birkenstock-wearing, Yoga performing wool hat wearers pretended to do, flailing their arms as they painted, or danced, or acted or whatever else they were pretending to express themselves through. But I realized today how expression doesn't have to be something conscious.
I've attached a closeup of the painting; it's just a part, the rest isn't finished. But behind the cauliflowers, the stripes, and the wayward lines, those are my dads eyes. Maybe if he was Santa Claus, he too could be eternal.
