Painting for Peace

Focus. Relax. Such small words with big meanings. It is so hard for me to focus and relax. I deal with so much negativity sometimes that it is hard for me to see the good. I always tell people to be thankful what you have and not what you don’t. I need to listen to my own advice sometimes.

I needed something. I read a lot, but the books, my goal is to have my own library in my house one day but reading just was not cutting it (and I read some fantastic books). I tried to take a page out of my grandma’s book and start quilting. That did not last for long (I kept pricking my fingers with the needle and getting blood on what I was sewing). I no longer had a garden or yard to contend with (and really, I could only do that during the spring and summer months), so that was out. I exercised…sometimes (meaning hardly ever). I was over Netflix and chillin with myself while my boyfriend worked during the day. So, what could I do to make my brain stop thinking?

And then…

Six months ago, I learned that my mother was given six months to live. I found out while cooking Christmas dinner. After that, I couldn’t focus on the food, but I didn’t have a choice. I mean, why in the world did my brother have to spill this news to me on Christmas Day? We had company coming and everyone was hungry. So, I kind of went on autopilot. Did what I needed to do to get the job done. I was there but not really. How was my mom going to take this? How was I going to take this? She is only fifty-eight years old! I am too young to lose my mama. Thoughts upon thoughts, worse case scenarios, all constantly streaming through my head like I’m binge watching my own life. All the memories, good and bad, on repeat. How am I expected to stay calm and not break down and cry every time I see my mom?

Well, I ended up taking a leave of absence from my job so I could spend more time with my mom while I had the chance. I was no good at work anyway because, well, I stopped caring about work and if I was doing a good job or not. My mom was in good spirits and honestly on some days you would not have been able to tell that she was terminally ill. It made us all hopeful that maybe a miracle would happen. I visited her and helped her as much as I could, and as much as she would let me. I think I was more stressed out about it then she was.

How do you relax with all that going on? I mean, since I wasn’t working, I became a good housewife to my boyfriend. But you know you can only clean so much and by 3 months into it, my toilet was so clean you could probably eat cereal out of it. I was not made to be a housewife or stay-at-home anything. Plus, cleaning just made me think more and I was tired more. There would be days when I did not even want to get out of bed. I would pretend I had a migraine so my boyfriend would just leave me alone and I wouldn’t have to worry about him asking for sex either. Staying home and preparing to lose my mom was taking its toll on my sanity.

Then I remembered that there was something I could do and that I did enjoy. Something I did a lot but kind of fell away from. My place of Zen. I found peace in painting.

I had started painting right after my son was born (he is now almost 16!), then just did it sporadically. I took my inspiration from Picasso, Dali, Pollack, and many other artists. I started out using oils but found that was very time consuming even though I liked the feel of kind of “kickin it old school” like those Renaissance pros. However, it really didn’t matter because I was not on their level artistically, but I also kind of didn’t care. I was painting for me, not them. It was A LOT of trial and error. Plus, oil paint took too long to dry and if you know anything about me, you would know I don’t have a lot of patience. It was one virtue that God missed when I was born, and I really think because of that He likes to test my patience a lot. He has a sense of humor sometimes.

You know how in the movies, whenever an artist is creating some masterpiece, the camera does a close up of the brush moving the paint across the canvas and you can see the first stroke making the canvas become this magical area that will produce this incredible picture? Sometimes when I’m painting, I feel like I am infusing a part of my soul into the picture. I see every brush stroke, every line, every sweep, or edge of the palette knife like that first close up on my canvas. I hear the brush going over the canvas, that roughness, that almost sandpaper like sound sweeping across a piece of wood to smooth it out. I almost feel the bristles of the brush when I swirl the colors around. When the palette knife cuts over the canvas to make a sharp angle, it sounds like a paper being torn in half.

My fingers cramp and my anal retentiveness gets the best of me sometimes when I am adding the fine details. Everything must be perfect on canvas because at least that’s one area of my life I can make perfect. I stare so close to the canvas that my eyes go blurry and bloodshot from staring so close. I don’t want to just see how the picture looks far away, I want to see every stroke, every color used, up close, like a camera zooming in. I want to see my soul in every small corner of that painting so that it speaks back to me. And hopefully speaks out to others one day. One day when, or if, I decide to share my soul with the rest of the world.

I am kind of selfish with my paintings. My son says I should sell them and make a lot of money. God love him for saying that. He sees how hard I work on them and how many I am accumulating in my basement and hanging on the walls in my house as decoration. Maybe I’m self-conscious and don’t really think they are all that great and maybe just like what everyone else would do. Nothing special. But good thing I do not do paint for everyone else and if no one else sees my soul in them well, there is really nothing I can do about that. So, for now, they are my babies that I just don’t want to let go of. Even when I give them away as gifts to family members, it hurts to part with them.

This outlet for all my emotions that I may be going through was perfect for me. Especially when I lost my mom. She also enjoyed painting. We did the whole wine and paint nights together or would sit in her living room painting and talking. She proudly displayed her paintings on her living room wall. It seriously was like walking into a small art gallery. She would paint a lot while she was doing her chemo and radiation sessions. She never complained once when she was sick. She made jokes about dying. She was cheerful to the day that she wasn’t.

To deal with my grief and the fact that I miss her like crazy, I painted. I painted her favorite things which was her cat and her ferrets. I painted her motorcycle looking into the horizon. I painted angels and perfect sunsets. I painted anything and everything that I thought she may be looking at right now in Heaven. I painted a campground where I spent most of my childhood with her every summer. I put a piece of her and myself into those canvases. I would be crying and the tears that fell from face would fall onto the canvas. Sometimes I blended them into the paint, sometimes I wiped them from the canvas because it was supposed to be a happy place. But when I painted something that reminded me of her, I felt her there laughing at me and being like “ooh that’s pretty!” Or there telling me “You’re doing it wrong.” Which was her favorite catchphrase to my brothers and myself.

After a while, the loss lessened. I painted the loss into my paintings, almost like letting it go, though it will never truly be erased. I also paint my happiness, my boredom, my anger, my annoyance at my boyfriend sometimes. I paint my feelings, negative or positive, into something beautiful to me. It is calming, therapeutic, cheaper than a therapist. It keeps me grounded and sane in this chaotic and dysfunctional world. It reminds me that I need to relax when life does not go my way. It never goes our way sometimes. But I can make a painting go my way all the time.

Whenever I am in my head, or want to get away from anything or anyone, my easel is where I turn. Even just sitting there starting at a blank canvas waiting for inspiration, calms me. Or if I’m just painting colors, with no direction, it turns into something beautiful and meaningful to me. I refuse to have a style or technique when it comes to my painting because I do not think art should have rules. I paint what comes naturally to me and it may not be a DaVinci or a Rembrandt, but to me it’s priceless. Your soul should not have a price and should not be limited. Knowing I created something special calms me and keeps me focused on other areas of my life. You learn to see in color and appreciate the beauty all around, even when life isn’t so beautiful, you can create your own beauty.