I Used to be a Painter

I Used to be a Painter

Recently I set up a space to paint in my bedroom because the space that was designated as a studio when we moved into our new home here in Vermont has not yet been insulated or wired with electricity or prepared in any way for the winter.  I was excited about the new outbuilding that used to be sugar house for making maple syrup by the previous owner and his son. 

It's a building at the far end of the backyard and the walls slide open to the hillside behind it. There is a glorious amount of light during the day when the windows and doors are open. I pictured it as the spot where I would find my way once again to the painter that has resided inside me my whole life, but who has been more ignored than not in much of my adult life.

I was like a little kid claiming my fort when we first walked the property last Spring. Once the dust had settled in mid July after the move here I set up my easel and drafting table, some shelves, stacks of old portfolios stuffed and breaking at the seams. I put a rug over the cement slab floor and propped a big heavy mirror against the wall. I brought a comfy chair to rest before the table and in the mornings I would walk across the wet grass in my bare feet with a cup of tea and once I opened it up I would just sit and look around and consider what the new work would look like. 

 I carried big Mason jars of water out to my "studio", God, I loved the sound of it, "my stuuudio"...I had finally found a space that wasn't squeezed into a corner, with a ceiling high enough to accommodate my easel, a gorgeous wooden Grumbacher easel purchased for a song more than thirty years ago. I paid $18 for it to a classmate who just didn't want to drag it with him when he finished school. It didn't fit in his Volkswagen Bug either. It has moved and been stored countless times. I have photos of my two oldest daughters climbing around it as a toddler and preschooler, sticking their faces out the bottom legs and wheeled frame on a back porch in Marlborough, New Hampshire. I had returned to undergraduate school as a special ed major and an art minor and was just starting to paint and participate in exhibits after what was quite a long break. Years back I had been a painting major at a small state college in Pennsylvania. I was just starting to get some momentum when life shifted. Life always seems to be shifting and for whatever reason, painting waits until things settle down.

About twelve years ago I had a space that was cavernous and empty except for my easel and paint and brushes. I worked all day then drove to that space in the evening, where, for hours, I would let loose. I played loud music, worked on large pieces of masonite, danced between them, got messy, and I could feel myself growing with every image that found its way to the surfaces. They were not all beautiful, but they were impressions of places that I passed and people I saw and they were shown to a modest crowd who loved them enough to ask for more. And then I stopped painting. I didn't stop looking and thinking about painting. I just stopped painting.

As the summer light changed and fall came fast it was clear that my new space was not going to get attention. There were too many other things competing. I was about to start a new job. The house needed a bit of work. The days grew shorter and there was no light left by the time I came home in the evenings. Concerned that the art that was stacked out back would not tolerate the temperature changes, one Saturday I moved it all to the house in a wheelbarrow, taking many trips across the yard that had now become frosty. Since the extra rooms in the house were set up for guests, I figured it made little sense to drag the easel, so I settled for the drafting table. I wheeled it to the house too.

There is something important about the space in which art is created. It needs to be a dedicated space. It needs light. It needs walls that will allow tape and tacks for images and words that inspire. It needs to have electric outlets so that music can be played. It needs to breathe and to be a place where I can breathe and let go of all other things that demand so much of me in my life.

The corner of my bedroom is not such a space.

 I love my job. My job is hard and it is not who I am as much as what I do. I know that I am supposed to make art. I wonder what it would be like to wake up every day and do just that. I wonder how it might evolve over time. I know that I will find my way back to being a painter and when I do, the space in which I do it will grow and change with me.