No one seems very impressed with the picture I painted in my daily mixed media art class during my week stay at Chautauqua – except me.
At first the blank canvas terrified me – reminding me of my initial gaze at the dashboard options of my newly leased car after driving a stripped-down Volvo station wagon for a decade. At least in that case, the myriad of options was finite. To sit down with a blank canvas and to be told to draw something is paralyzing. I needn’t have worried.
“Close your eyes, breathe deeply and imagine your favorite space,” my art instructor begins. “Picture the door and window placement. Think about the room’s colors, the walls, the furniture arrangement. Picture the season of the year, the time of day, the textures of the fabric, the way the light spreads its glow. And think about something happy that happened there.”
I visibly relax. I let the images of my grandmother’s second story front porch wash over me. It’s summer. Early morning. Two place settings sit atop her wrought iron glass top table – one for me and one for her. A pitcher of orange juice, an oversized bottle of Karo Syrup and a ceramic vase of her homegrown bright pink roses completes the arrangement.
I picture myself restlessly squirming in my seat, skinny legs dangling, eagerly waiting for my grandmother to push the screen door open with her free hand. The screen door creaks as my grandmother emerges – carefully balancing a heaping platter of matzo meal pancakes stacked on a gleaming white china tray. She sets the tray down and rushes back into her tiny kitchen to fetch her scalding hot coffee – proceeding to heavily douse it with little white pellets of saccharine.
Our beloved Saturday morning ritual begins: Breakfast with my grandmother on her front porch.
My reverie is interrupted.
“Use your canvas to paint with the predominant colors you have just imagined,” I hear our funkily dressed art instructor chirp.
My grandmother’s boldly striped canvas awning covering the entire space of the porch pops into mind. And I began to squeeze out little puddles of green, red and yellow acrylic paint onto my blank sheet of paper – swirling my paint brush boldly.
“Use another piece of paper to paint things that illustrate the interior,” I hear my art teacher murmur. “Then cut and paste what you have drawn on that second piece of paper onto the first piece.”
Three hours fly by as we chat, paint, cut and paste.
The following day, stiff pieces of canvas are laid out at our places in the studio. “Use these to frame the piece you made yesterday,” our art teacher explains. She shows us how to measure for the opening, to use the inside part of the canvas to experiment with frame design ideas – and then cut them out and place beside picture. “Choose one design and then begin to paint the canvas frame,” she instructs clearly.
My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer sixty-four years ago. Her sewing box is tucked away on a shelf in my laundry room. Her Art Deco jewelry has a prominent spot in my armoire and a picture of her hangs close to my king size bed. But this painting captured – like nothing else clearly has – the sheer joy she brought into my life when I was a seven year-old little girl – adoring her unconditionally.
I don’t know where I will hang my picture.
I do know my picture has become one of my most prized possessions.
And I am deeply grateful to my lovely young art instructor (far left) for guiding me through the creative process – releasing that wispy, blurred recollection into something vivid, bold and enduring.
Starting at the top far left is an abstract representation of me, then a chair, and then a window. Below that, starting at the far left, is a ladder – representing a gateway to my future years without her – and a table with a vase of flowers. Clearly I’m not quite museum-ready but it’s a modest start!
Try your hand at something artistic. You, too, might be surprised what the process unleashes.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Ruth Pastor