I walk down the stairs to my art studio and inhale. The warm air smells of turpentine and calms me as it fills my lungs.
I then take out my palette and squeeze some paints onto it.
With my brushes in hand, I start to make a world out of my canvas.
I try to mimic the techniques of the masters that have come before me, Monet and Sorolla and O’Keefe, with the hope that maybe, I can, quite possibly, create a (at least slightly) dramatic piece that holds some sort of meaning.
Paintings, both mine and those belonging to great painters, stir me and sharpen my perception of the world. To view or to create something so visually pleasing can bring a great deal of meaning and satisfaction. In my eyes, art has become a collection of mirror images of me as a person. As advanced as I may become, or as intelligent or successful as I may become, I will still have my underlying flaws. Such is the same as oil paintings. Within each painting, there are flawed charcoaled outlines, clothed with layers of paint.
One of my most recent paintings is a portrait of a boy. I had a lot of fun with it. Let me tell you, oil is a lot of fun. Still, it’s a rather dark painting, as I did use dark colors to complete it, but also dark in the sense that it depicts a physically beat-up boy. My painted boy is a bruised up, poor guy, but he has striking eyes. My painting, with the pain-filled eyes I tried to create and the dark colors, convey what I want it to-something we all are very well acquainted with, pain. Pain, a very human, basic emotion, whether we want to recognize it or not. See, that’s one of the main points of art, to portray unutterable human energies. And in that respect, painting has served as a source of healing for me. The mixing and morphing of different colors have always been cathartic and cleansing to me. I am thankful to have found such an outlet.
When thinking about my finished painted boy, which is now just sitting on a shelf in my garage, I think about the ways in which I could have made it better. My proportions were off, my shadowing not quite the way I wanted it to be. And this goes with practically all of my paintings. I am never 100% content. But hopefully, eventually I’ll be able to fix my blemishes when painting. Until then, I’ll just have to work on my technique and my ability. And in this manner, I bring myself back to the fact that I am much like my paintings. I have flaws, but with time and my attention, my imperfections can be corrected, and I have the ability to lose some of my faultiness to become a little bit better. I am a work in progress. Aren’t we all?
