From Jan Phillips, Museletter, August 2009:
The other day my fried Ruth called and asked if I wanted to play in her art studio. If she had said let’s go play with our cameras, I’d have jumped for joy, but no…she wanted to paint.
I had to confess to her that painting makes me nervous. I practically break out in hives when I have a paintbrush in my hand and an empty canvas in front of me. To me, the words “fun” and “painting” go together like “diet” and “hot fudge sundae.” But as I was confessing, I realized just how silly I was being. I was insecure because I am a novice. I don’t know what to do with paints. I don’t know how to “play” with colors. I’ve had two art classes in my life and never felt accomplished after either of them. “It’s not about being accomplished,” said Ruth. It’s about playing with color, about suspending time, about losing ourselves in the joy of the moment.” Now she was beginning to sound like me.
And that’s when I realized I had to jump in and do it–face my fears, extend my boundaries, and place myself in the hands of a loving master, which is exactly what I did for four hours. I breathed my way through the anxiety, let go of my fear of failing (which was helped by Ruth’s constant mantra: “You cannot make a mistake.”)
“It’s all about layering,” she said. “You put down a few colors, see what happens, and let it dry. After awhile, we go back to it and work on it a little more.” Just like making a poem, I thought. Ted Kooser writes about it in his Poetry Home Repair Manual. “Set aside what you’ve written and let it cool off for awhile. If you can manage to do it, leave it alone till it begins to look as if somebody else might have written it. Then you can see it for what it is, a creation independent of you, out on its own. A poem must be equipped to thrive by itself in a largely indifferent world. You can’t be there with it, like its parent, offering explanations, saying to a confused reader, ‘Yes, but here’s what I meant!’ A poem has to do all of its own explaining.”
So I splashed down my favorite colors, watched them dance and change and take their own shapes while I let go (almost) of rigid notions about controlling the medium and ending up with something worthwhile. I wanted something I could be proud of at the end, though Ruth kept saying that was not why we were there. I kept wanting something to look finished. At the end of the day, I had one piece I loved. “I want to frame it!” I said. Ruth winced, but she gave me some matboard and sent me on my way. On the way home, I realized I had a long way to go in surrendering…at least in the painting department. I’m going to go back soon and try it again, see if I can succeed in not being attached, not needing a finished product, not having to frame something that says, “Look, I succeeded.”
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd.” Now I understand what he meant by that.
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