There came a point when I felt too late, too old, too out of place, under practiced and too sidetracked by family for the art world. The real art world of galleries and money where I always believed I belonged. I lived in the wrong place – Hawaii is a long way from New York. The invitation to RISD I received at age 17 has long expired.
Was it the 1st, or 2nd or 3rd summer, between traveling or state university or dropping out, when I sat on the floor of my parent’s garage in some rented house that was unfamiliar with art materials at hand. Between moving boxes and an open view of the suburban cul-de-sac driveway I finger painted a perfectly graceful bald profile of a head in black and white with nails and red. Not the sort of thing you hang on the wall. What I remember is the precise expression of my mood: the frustration of limitation within the limitless, and the curve of that bare-bald nail pierced mind. What happened to it I dare not ask my parents. Am I a delusional eccentric waking up to a dream that is no longer, or never was, meant to be mine? I’m too rebellious to acquiesce.
I don’t really like pretty pictures.
I enjoy, revel in, and deeply appreciate beauty, but I’m less passionate about creating only beautiful things. I want to create pictures that mean something, that make a difference to people. I want my work to matter. How? I don’t know, somehow. I am just a mom — who draws and paints and writes and observes and imagines — with a story and a head full of the same concerns and frustration that parents, like any species, have: the survival instinct to care for our young. Art skill and ambitious drive and imagination gave me some things, maybe even enough to compensate for lack of husband, but what happens when that mother is just plain tired. What gives in the end?
Who were we the primal earth humans, who developed logic to survive the rise of civilization? I search for a practical approach to designing a life out of the contradictory chaos, asking aren’t we the artists, the sounds and faces and words of our world, the designers and solutions finders – the only hope for the future? I don’t know what kind of artist I am anymore. I, the fully trusting experimenter, afraid of the blank canvas for reasons other than shyness – afraid to waste the paper on something there isn’t a practical place for. I scribble the imagined on post-its. I could fill a gallery of post-its. I collect wood and boards so I am ready and I set up tables and shelves of supplies collected. I hire carpenters to build panels and frames and paint those white as well. All of the blank white to receive a quieted me.
Watching the air. Something becoming of no thing. Dreaming, planning, excitement. Effort, time, then distraction. Fueled determination failed and stood up derailed and stood up, like a pulse, going back to a pool of question while still on track under a changing sky – I don’t really know what to do with it. I’ve made too many plans. I have expectations damn it. I criticize which direction to go before I begin. Yes, me, the one who got through to the next place by slamming her paint covered body onto the white wall. I have forgotten how I once set my hands in and dove — into paint and pigment and splinters and sand and dirty water or whatever was at hand until I was lost in the depths of somewhere and I’d wake up returned from another time. Since then I’ve become scared of creating sidetracks, as if an entire childhood could be accidentally overlooked. Longing scared of veering from the coached path with a rebellious love for exploring the woods. Wild woods. I miss traveling.
Trained to focus on one theme, one collection, one project to completion as if this defiance of nature is maturity. Yes, I the explorer who has trusted the road to take me there, who has enjoyed process more than product – now turned master of confined journeys — aimless inside the precise organization, wasted when not neatly contained between a visible horizon and a bottom line. I have a schedule now. My phone rings. There are kids in the house and they need me for things. Their laundry is on the floor as they sit around watching YouTube and texting on digital devices as I provide the wifi. I’m pulled to the fact that there are house chores to be done, money to be made, time to manage effectively. There are and boys to be trained and habits and routines to model and an order and calmness to maintain to the couch potatoes who don’t want to be riled as much as I don’t want to be distracted by any of it. But in deep down truth, they want it too – culture. They are watching the other creators, as I want us all to be creative.
It was the most beautiful surprise. Like a grand and obvious discovery. They drop everything when I drop everything. I meet them at the dining room table and we draw.
Can this be art? My idealist frustration at the canvas painting a family in progress. I never wanted to only paint pretty pictures – I want to create a beautiful truth that stirs some desire for meaning. I always had a little of that in me and now I have so much overflowing that all my blank canvases shout out to me at once. Is it any wonder, on the other side of excitement, that I start out afraid of what it will look like?