Finally, joy

Life drawing, caran d’ache on Duralene

I wonder if I can adequately express the joy I feel when I am painting. Heck, I feel joyful when I am simply thinking about painting. And this is new.

I spent years agonizing over my work. It was never good enough for me. Looking back on it now, I can see that the work showed promise. I have always been a good technician and a good copy-ist from life or photographs, and I have a good visual memory which has made it easy for me to work from my head. The result was that for many years I made very competent illustrations. But, I didn’t want to illustrate, I wanted to paint, and painting takes courage, which I didn’t have.

Good illustrations are not necessarily pretty, but to “work” they must convey an idea or a story. The best illustrations provide most of the information we need to understand what the artist is saying. In my experience they are easy to love because they don’t obligate us to work to understand them. There is no such rule in painting. Paintings ask the viewer to look to themselves to understand, and this is not always an easy experience.

My previous “paintings” were rendered to within an inch of their lives. I still think they’re beautiful, but they were no fun to make because they were so neurotic. I never allowed myself to interpret what I saw. I never left anything to the imagination. I never had any fun on the canvas or paper. When I was finished, even I was amazed at what had come from my hands, but the making always felt like a chore. And the truth is that I was afraid to do otherwise. People were amazed at my work because it was so “realistic,” and I was afraid that if I “let go” they would no longer like what I made. Then something clicked, and suddenly I didn’t care anymore.

Maybe it was that I no longer wanted to make the same paintings that so many other competent artists in Maine are making. Maybe it was that I have been yearning for a level of critical discussion that I haven’t enjoyed since grad school, a conversation that I am currently having with myself on the canvas. Maybe it was because I have a really good studio for the first time in years and my husband is unendingly supportive. Maybe I finally rediscovered my childhood courage — the unselfconsciousness of someone who hasn't yet learned to be afraid.

What I can say is that I absolutely love my hours in the studio like I never have before, and they seem to fly by. And, I love my new paintings. I can’t wait to start the next one just to see how I’ll interpret it. I’m having so much fun. Finally.