Painting

How I spent the afternoon

During this month of exploration, I have taken the opportunity to rediscover things I onced loved dearly. Today's project was to paint on a canvas.


As a child, I loved to draw. Art was my favourite subject in high school. College gave me the opportunity to continue refining my skills. Then, I stopped doing art cold turkey. I had met my future husband, and there just didn't seem to be enough hours left in the day to devote to such unproductive activities like art. I mean, it wasn't like I was going to be the next van Gogh or anything. But, the lure of sculpting and painting never really left me. So, when I saw an easel and canvases on sale, I splurged.

 When I got home, I set up my easel and canvas and just stared at it. The fear of painting something not good enough made me hesitant to put a pencil to my perfectly blank slate. I felt like I needed to paint something grandiose, something that would pay hommage to the years I spent taking art lessons. Something truly great. It was a lot of pressure. The whole issue became stressful, so I put the project on the backburner for a while.

Then, while out jogging, I spotted something in an art gallery window that looked like this:

This is actually a much more polished version of what I saw.
The real deal looks like crayon scribbled on yellowed, partly torn paper.

This is when it occurred to me that of all hobbies to give up because of feeling not good enough, painting is a pretty ridiculous choice. Clearly, there is room for everyone in this field - as evidenced by the crayon-on-torn-paper work on sale around the corner. I also realized that this time around, no one was going to be evaluating my portfolio. I was doing this for me. I didn't need to slave for weeks over creating a photorealist depiction of some stupid fruit bowl. And you know what I enjoy painting most? Abstract designs. I love plotting out colour schemes on a colour wheel. I love watching the colours blend together when I mix them on my palette. I love seeing the effect colours have on each other when applied next to one another on a canvas. This is precisely the kind of art my ex-husband would deam "not real art." (As an aside, he also considers Renoir "a hack" and nearly got us thrown out of an art gallery for being a wee bit too vocal about this opinion a few years ago.)

Boating on the Seine by Renoir

Anyhow, I decided to give myself permission to paint what I wanted rather than what I felt I should. This was the result: