Blank Canvas as a Dust Cloth

How did I come about? I wonder about this when I paint sometimes and I write about it in my blogs, reliving my childhood in stories. In my head the beautiful women I paint are the girls who were counselors at the playground. The ones who came to my aid when a bully ripped my sketchbook away from me, and bandaged my knee when I flew off a swing. They were the lifeguards who kept me out of the deep end until I could swim. Cousins, resting and reading in a hammock, along the river at Uncle Al's cottage. These images are with me when I paint. Mrs. Clemen, teaching her son Donny how to cook, comes to mind when I paint my model Anne teaching her nephew how to play like they are cooking in my studio. I had no idea that when I was studying to become an artist I would fall back on childhood memories for so many subjects to paint.

For years these memories sat in the dusty parts of my brain waiting for when a white canvas would be the dust cloth, dusting those treasures off to see if I can recreate those memories with a model. My cousin, asleep in the shade of an oak tree, catching a tiny ray of light in her open hand. For a moment, her white soft hand with that spot of light held me, feeling the breeze and the sound of the leaves high above. Put away in a corner of my brain, forgotten till a ray of light came through my studio window and I asked Jordan to pose so she could catch it. Only then did the memory of my cousin Barbra come back to me. The sound of the breeze in the trees filled me with fond memories. Memories relived through my open studio window, a breeze and the light through the tree outside, and the patient and lovely Jordan posing and resting.

Our Purpose Isn't in The Green of the Trees

As artists we are given the gift of holding a soul in our hands with each subject. Whether it be that of a fallen tree or a clear blue sky, it is the soul of our subject that inspires us. Our choices of colors, which brush feels best - it’s all being revealed through the soul of our subject.

A model may reveal their body, but it is their soul we are looking for as we work. A face, weathered with age, wears it in the wrinkles that came from years of smiles, or frowns of worry and pain. As artists we are given the privilege of seeing and holding it. It is when we understand that privilege that we also realize it is our own soul we seek, too. While on that hunt to capture a likeness of our feelings we also reveal their kinship to others and the gift of a greater understanding of the world.

Our purpose isn't in the green of the trees or the rosiness of those cheeks that we hold so important, it is in knowing who we are. A clear vision of ourselves forms on our canvas or in the watercolors that run across our paper, and that is our prize and reward. The ribbons, the gold medals, those huge checks are all incidental compared to those feelings that come from within when we see who we are in this world.