The Zen of Painting

I can't paint worth a lick. I know that. I don't need anyone to tell me. But I don't care. I don't paint for you; I paint for me. It makes me smile.

I've always been what you could call a nervous sort, uptight, a bit high strung. My biggest concerns were doing what's right, fitting in, towing the line, all things that for one reason or another, never came easy to me.

Growing up, I was always messing up. I was, as my mother would say, intent on learning the hard way. To counteract the consequences of taking the hard road, I was determined to be a top citizen as an adult, top student, top mother, top wife, top daughter, all with a top job and an all around top life. I twisted myself into knots to fit into the image I had of a woman who had it all, three beautiful baby boys, working nights while graduating top of my university undergraduate class. Then onto law school where I again distinguished myself academically and went on to gain a coveted position in the region's top law firm.

I was living the dream, someone else's dream, only I didn't know it. My life had taken on a momentum of its own. Each day was reduced to a seemingly never-ending to-do list. No real excitement, no real passion. Of course there were happy moments, but overall, no real reason to get up in the morning, aside from that list of things to do.

I told myself I didn't mind. Such was the life as an adult. As the old saying goes, "when I became an adult, I put away childish things," and passion and excitement were, after all, the things of a child. Being a grown-up was serious business and serious business was to be taken seriously.

That all changed when a legal assistant in my office told me about a painting she had purchased from a local well-known artist by the name of Carl Parker. The name did more than ring a bell, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Carl Parker was the name of my high school sweetheart, my first love, a treasured piece of my soul I had long since buried to avoid the pain of remembering. We had tried dating twice, and while our relationship was filled with endless love and excitment, it was doomed to crushing failure. He left me, brokenhearted and confused, twenty years prior, never to be heard from again. I remember giving my head a shake, it couldn't possibly be the same guy.

One quick look at his Facebook profile confirmed it. The artist and the long lost love were in fact, one in the same. He was older (of course, so was I), quite a bit heavier, with less hair, but the face was the same, the intense gaze and that pesky raised left eyebrow he used to use to torment me. It was him alright! I remember being filled with an intense rush of joy, fear, anticipation and dread as I sent him a message. Maybe he wouldn't remember me. Maybe he hated me. Maybe I had built our love story up in my head as some sort of fairytale that it had never been.

Well, he certainly remembered me, and he didn't hate me. In fact, I hadn't built our romance up in my head and we soon picked up exactly where we left off. It was if no time had passed at all. He was the same fiercly independent, impatient, passion-filled boy I left behind. I marvelled now in the childlike wonder he brought to his life, something that once annoyed me beyond belief.

I used to sit in the spare room I'd set up as a studio for him and watch in awe as he painted with wild abandon. There seemed to be no rhyme, no reason, to what he was doing. Music blaring, paint flying, splattering as it landed on the floor, the walls, the windows and on him. There was something in the freedom of it all, yet I bristled at the sheer untidyness of it.

"Relax," he'd tell me, "you need to just BE". He was right, but I really didn't know what that meant. It had been such a foreign concept for so long, it simply escaped me. He kept telling me to go back, find 4 year-old me and have a conversation with her, embrace her. Frankly, it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, but I humoured him.

Funny thing, it worked. He handed me a paintbrush and told me to give it a try. I refused, I couldn't draw a straight line let alone paint an entire picture. I wasn't about to make a fool of myself, especially in front of an artist of his calibre. He persisted, resorting to emotional blackmail by telling me he dreamed of us painting together side by side. Well, how could I say no? I couldn't, so I tried it.

My first piece took me about 12 hours. It was a small 12x12" painting of a little girl wearing her firefighter mother's hat. I called it Mommy's Hat. I remember sneaking out of bed and into the studio in the middle of the night to finish it.

There I was, alone in the studio, door closed, sitting on the floor, canvas in front of me, surrounded by tubes of paint and a jar jammed full of brushes. A glass of wine and some music completed the scene. I fell into my creation, or maybe the process of creating it, I'm not entirely sure, like nothing I'd ever experienced before. Time and space seemed to melt away, leaving only the joy of doing something seemingly unproductive. I mean, it wasn't work, it wasn't on my list, it was just painting for the sake of painting. It was for fun. By the end of it, I had something I was actually pretty impressed with. Given my lack of any artistic talent whatsoever, producing something that bore some resemblance to its intended vision was a win in my books. Four year old me would have been pleased.

Carl was pleased too, dare I say, even a bit impressed. Granted, he snickered at my complete lack of understanding of all the fundamental aspects of Art 101, but he said my little painting had something many professional artists can never get right, it had heart. He said he could feel the joy and childlike whimsy in it and that superceded its obviously lacking technical merits. He encouraged me to continue, to see what came out of me. And I did.

Soon, the studio, in the wee hours of the morning, while the rest of the world was fast asleep, became my sanctuary. I can't explain why I only paint in the wee hours, it's just the way it is. I suppose it's because I've always been a night owl, preferring the stillness of night to the frantic bustle of daytime. Just me, a canvas, my wine and music and my paint. There's something about being in that space and the act of painting that transforms me from a middle aged woman with bills, worries and responsibilites into that innocently exuberant 4 year old girl I once was. I find myself painting from her view of the world. It's a much needed reprieve from the realties of day to day life and an opportunity to recharge and refuel my soul. Yes, my paintings look like a child did them, that's because in many ways, it's true.