Every Breath Colors Existence

I missed Color Class tonight. I wrote it in my planner, but then I fell asleep, so I didn’t go.

What does that say about me? I don’t know. Or, I do. I needed the sleep.

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An abstract painter who loves to blend teaches Color Class at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

It is an in-person class, a blessing, and I am grateful for it.

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When I go, which I always did until tonight, I spend those hours amidst other inspired travelers, focused on gradation.

We study the color wheel, color schemes, and values. We mix hues with pale tints and darkened shades. We practice blending one color to the next seamlessly, incorporating subtle ripples into our pieces, alongside bold shifts and energetic light.

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It’s a fancy and a fight.

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The Artist asks herself : Is this it? Is this right? Does right matter? Where is the light coming from? What does this colorful painting say about me?

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At times, my modern-era self-absorption hovers over everything. It penetrates everything, like a tiny drop of magenta that turns a puddle of white, pink.

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I think. A quiet mind makes a better painting. No. I think. A quiet mind makes a different painter.

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Deep breath in…

Deep breath out...

Just be.

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At home, I take the paints out of my backpack. I focus, ready to transform and finish the work. Then my little one crawls out of bed. She joins me at the table and picks up a brush. She gets a rush. You can see it in twinkle in her eyes. In a flash, she swipes pure Payne’s Gray all over those patient blue hues. Of course.

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Deep breath in...

Deep breath out...

React.

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What does my reaction say about me— as a Mother, an Artist, a Being? I don’t know. Or, I do. I am me.

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We are we.

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Every experience colors us. Every moment, every breath, every choice, every non-choice paints our essence. The colors keep coming—the blues, the blacks, the reds, the greens. They splash upon us like paint hitting Pollack’s canvas. Or they brush on, in more delicate sweeps, crafting a moody mood a la Rothko. Or, more precisely, those colors meld with your human canvas in a style never attempted before. Your style.

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You are you.

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We are we.

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We live lives drenched in color. We exude our colors. We are Artists, all of us.

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Me. I am an Artist, and I am a Healer, and the Artist and the Healer are one. I learned and recited that mantra repeatedly in Healing with the Arts, an online class I took during this global pandemic. Every moment is an opportunity to heal, I learned.

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Every breath is a chance to add more color, to blend in those subtle ripples alongside bold shifts and energetic light.

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We are we.

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We are works of art whose layers and color schemes are limitless. In bold and subtle ways, we are constantly transforming, glowing, shimmering, dulling down, or blurring into a mix of the rainbow. The paint that creates our essence dries slowly. It’s almost always wet, pliable, more like oil than acrylic.

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Yes I missed Color Class. Yet whether I go to class or skip it, those reactive tints, tones, and shades still wash into me. They change me. The colors make me more me.

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Now it’s morning.

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Out the windowpane, I see the lake. Sometimes it disappears into the white mist, swallowed up by daybreak fog. Other mornings, it burns clear blue, heated by the throbbing, orange, rising sun. Now, it is dark and murky. The lake ripples with waves, dancing with the wind and splashing birds. It metamorphizes in color before my eyes.

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It is the day after I missed Color Class. Who am I? I am me, an essence painted with every poem. I radiate color.