Releasing Knowledge with Color

Twenty-two stairs up to my room, 207. It becomes a studio when I enter. A small space of 20x24 feet. Floor tiles missing from a couple floods, splattered paint on the floor from years of walking about with painted souls on my shoes. The morning sunlight streaming in through the west window, the nearby casino's glass dome directs the sun's light straight to my easel each morning.

Hot chocolate made, oatmeal raisin cookie heated, I'm about ready to begin my day. Walls filled with memories cause me to pause as I take in each painting. Maddie smiles out at me from the sunflowers I gave her, her little brother remains an angel, sleeping in another painting. Both are grown now, but here in my studio they remain young. Couldn't hold A.J., their brother back, he left for Canada a few years back. Josephine still holds a spoon full of yogurt and strawberries as I look around. Kim never gets to that next chapter as she reads her book and Amy is forever studying for that big test that worries her.

Gifts of trust and respect are in paintings. The nude, a poem written with colors and a gifted hand. We first draw to gain knowledge, then paint with colors to release that knowledge alongside the feelings we have gained. For a while we hold the soul of another as we put them to canvas.

I roll out a rug from beneath the model's stand so feet will remain pink. Heater in position, colors out and brushes ready. These rituals are important for me, each brings me close to being the artist I wish to be. All that I have learned over the years needs to be at hand. How I place a color or a brush stroke is part of who I am. The shape of an eye or an ear is who the model is, the way it is portrayed is who I am. That balance of model and artist is the art.

My Playground Is Different Now

Pigeon Hill Playground, the swings were the place to watch the counselors. At least till the older boys came and yanked you off the swing. My first summer being allowed to go to the playground was supposed to be my chance to meet friends and to get to know classmates better. It was also a chance to say hi to a girl from my school who I liked, but did not care to talk to me. She was there when one of the neighborhood bullies tipped me over backwards to remove me from the swing. She laughed, and that was it for the playground for a while.

All through grade school I was one of the boys who were known to have cooties. I guess that's why the first time I hired a model I got that feeling that I was about to be pushed off a swing. It was in New York, where I was learning how to be an artist. Tired of doing paintings of my breakfast or of my dinner, I hired my first real model, sight unseen. Kathy was her name. She was six feet, two inches tall. I was so taken by her my ears suddenly needed popping, and I was quite aware of my breathing. I must have told her it would be for a nude when I phoned her, because she was suddenly nude - and I was still on my swing. The only sound for the next three hours was the sound of my conte' stick being drug across my gessoed panel. Dressed, I paid her and showed her to the door, where I got a peck on the cheek. My cooties were gone and I was swinging high for the first time.

The gallery sold that drawing the day it arrived. Fifty-plus years later I'm still on that swing, and still feeling my ears popping. Only now I'm listening to life stories and about mean professors and boyfriends who are disappointments. Still the occasional nude, but now I am tackling Scilla wrapped in white silk and Brianna's worn jeans. Spending the day painting Scilla's hands, and explaining why she is posing nude if all I want are her hands.

Those days at the playground still return as I paint, only now Jane doesn't walk away, instead she tells me about life in Hungary or the homework she has. I listen as I lift my brush to canvas and try to capture a hand talking or an earring peeking from the shadows of silk like hair. My playground is different now.