Guest Artists - Reminders of Painting What You See

Visitors while painting is part of the pleasure and annoyances of painting in public. When you're in the zone and someone whispers, "what are yodoing?' just over your shoulder is an annoyance, and has caused my heart to stop and my brush to paint an extra long limb. For the most part, I appreciate the visitors. It allows a random moment to step away from my work and look at it from their eyes. I always see something I need to fix. 

Having children as visitors is my favorite. I usually carry a hard cover sketchbook and a marker, and offer them an opportunity to make their own artwork on a page. The deal is, their parent can take a photo of the art, (usually they want the artist and my painting too) and I keep the book.

Some arrive with their own coloring implements, on their way to somewhere their time needs to be occupied. I'm amazed at how much elementary-age kids know about art and color. I don't think I got any of that from Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Green Jeans. They know what the primary colors are, and even more impressive, how to make green, purple and orange - the secondary colors.  

Parents have asked me for my painting schedule, which I don't provide, mainly because I don't have one. I've had parents return with their kids to watch the progress of my painting or to bring me a painting the child has made in the meantime. 

I've worked with children since I had a robust babysitting business, starting as a mother's helper for a neighbor when I was around 10. In high school, I brought flowers with a note, "thanks for the new business", to my favorite families with newborns. Though my credential from college was as a health educator, my first job was as a health coordinator for a poverty agency in Jackson, MI, connected to a family-related Head Start Program. THe focus of my work was to knock away any challenges that prevented preschool children from attending and getting their Head Start. 

Cumpulsory staff training happened every Friday. Employees received GEDs or credits toward bachelor or masters degrees with professors from Michigan State University and the local Community College. My on the job trainging allowed me to observe and interact with the kids intentionally. When I left that position, I was well on my way to a graduate degree and forever respectful and awed by preschoolers. Later jobs took my out the realm of kids, but their visits are always a joy, a reconnection to a much younger me, and a reminder to paint the way I see things... 

Paul McCartney and the Cut Glass Tumbler of Trust

A few minutes ago, after I said to myself, "What the hell, there's only an inch of wine in that bottle", I discovered Paul McCartney singing songs of the generation that came before annoying. For me, he remains the voice of the baby boomers, not the bobby soxers. He was one over-thirty person that I thought I could trust.

  

This profound thought came to me as I washed dishes from a lunch I fixed for my son, but eventually consumed by my neighbor. The threat of a terrifying ice storm curtailed our mother-son bonding, and Nancy, walking her dog, became an easy invitation for helping me reduce the amount of chicken soup. You see, I don’t like leftovers. I find them tired and old and not a better dish after the flavors all meld together. I like fresh.

And yet, I dare to tell an old story. I will begin with a fresh-made lesson from today. Don’t place travel coffee mug tops, the rubber malleable ones that bend and slide on like condoms, in the silverware bin in the dish drainer. Very sharp, pointy knives may poke through them and create a joke coffee mug. Which by the way, in the morning is not funny.

I envisioned the horrors of a sweater or fresh shirt perfectly matched for the day, soiled by dribbles of coffee. I know this to be a real threat. My connect-the-dot brain vividly remembers a visit to Uncle Harry and Aunt Laura, who were sibling to my grandmother. As I write this, I side-step in memory to my father’s funeral and reading my Uncle Harry’s name, affixed in brass, as the benefactor of the oak throne used for the priest’s respite during his duties saying  Mass. Clearly, Uncle H. had money, pull and always, the highest esteem of my father.

Which brings me to Aunt Laura, who thought it hilarious to give an eight year old a cut glass tumbler etched with branches, each with many many minute leaves. I remember Aunt Laura chuckling as I examined the glass and liquid dribbled down my arm, then hooting uncontrollably, in a Julia Child-like laugh, when ginger ale splashed from the holes in the middle of some leaves and spotted my turquoise dress.

I remember the dress. I remember the chair, the end tables, the lamp, the drapes and her curly “done” hair back lit, a halo from the windows behind where she sat. I remember sitting between my parents, my father in a flowered chair my mother and me on a settee. I remember that my mother smiled looking first at Aunt Laura then turning her back to her and  snarling, her lips pursing as she frantically wiped my chest with her cocktail napkin before the soda spattered the Aunt’s floor.

ITunes moved beyond McCartney to Rodriguez and the dishes are dry like the bottle. When I put the them away, I will test the travel mug lid. It just isn’t worth trusting what once was safe. 

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p.s., If you hit the McCartney link, you'll hear his new-old music. When I hear it mixed with more modern, it get diluted and more palatable. I still LOVE the Beatles.