Becoming a Painter

Last Essay for Now

2010-12-12T17:43:00.002-05:00

I have decided to stop writing essays for now, although I will continue to post new paintings as I finish them.

In part, I wish to devote more energy to painting. But another reason for not writing is I find myself starting to repeat ideas. I began these essays to help me (and I hoped others) learn to live with illness. In these essays I thought about fear and the necessity of allowing it; about letting go of a need for order; about the scale of little things. In short, through these writings I feel I’ve learned to live fairly well, with a kind of joy although tempered by moments still of anger, frustration or sorrow. But the joy predominates. I don’t need to dwell on these anymore. I’d rather get on with life and its joys. And with painting

Thanks for all your comments and support.

Other paintings can be viewed at my portfolio site, TichStudio.com

Empty House

2010-09-19T09:13:00.000-04:00

This house, a couple miles from here, has been long abandoned. Yet inside there is still furniture; curtains hang at the upstairs windows. The two-story bay window must have been the talk of the county once; an unusually flashy detail for a rural house.

The most intriguing detail to me, however, is the second front door. In the painting it’s hidden, but it’s next to the one visible on the left. The visible door leads into a large living room with fireplace. The invisible one opens on a small parlor. A smaller office-like room sits behind that. I imagine the house belonged to a country lawyer or doctor who practiced in these two rooms. The rest of the house was for family, but I’m sure the squeals of children intruded into that office.

Whatever its story, the house now holds only silence. It’s like a lost friendship, frozen in time. I find myself thinking more and more of people who’ve disappeared from my life—friends, colleagues, loves, acquaintances, even the occasional enemy. In my mind I see them as they last were but like me, they must be aging too. Are they happy? Any regrets? Do they ever think of me?

Memories of them are like the furniture in this empty house, not useful for anything, but evocative nonetheless. Friendships are lost mostly because of our own sloppiness; we misplace each other through carelessness. We didn’t try hard enough, forgive soon enough, or listen enough.

Now we are memories for one another, curtains stirring at a broken window. I think I still love everyone who’s ever been a friend. I forgive them all. I regret any hurts I’ve given. I miss them. My invisible front door is open.

Radio Silence

2010-08-29T14:29:00.003-04:00

I rarely listen to radio anymore. Once it was as automatic in the morning to turn on a radio as it was to make coffee. At night, the radio would be the second to last thing I’d turn off, just before the bedside lamp. I needed the noise. The yabber-jabber word play of disc jockeys was as important to me as phone conversation, maybe more. Unlike the recorded “Press one to hear this important message about your credit card,” a DJ’s voice sounded human.

In recent years my media use has dwindled to almost nothing. I cancelled television because the only thing I ever watched was Cartoon Network. To sit by a television felt more and more like doing nothing. People react to this revelation as if I am making some kind of arrogant boast or statement—political, moral, obnoxious, or otherwise. But I’m not. I don’t watch TV because I truly don’t want to.

My losing interest in television was odd enough, I suppose, even to me, but then interest in newspapers, magazines, and now radio have dwindled as well. I dutifully check up on world events through the Internet, but something that once was as routine as breathing is now a chore, like laundry. I have to make myself check the news.

I wasn’t aware of the extent of the change until I attended a music festival yesterday. It’s the first I’d been surrounded by raw manufactured sound in a long time. It was great music, but a relief to get home. As my illness progresses I think I need more and more silence, or at least a different kind of noise. Instead of rock beats, it’s cicadas I need to hear. Instead of DJ’s, I crave goldfinch chatter. Instead of weather reports, I consult the thrum of passing dragonfly wings.

I do not understand the change. I simply need more silence now. My body is declining; I have come to trust the food cravings it sends me. They are accurate for helping me adjust my relentless imbalances. Maybe my craving for silence is the same, a path for righting an imbalance. A raccoon coughs in the night; a coyote yelps; a deer stamps its feet. I hear nature’s music and can sing myself, not with my voice, but with the beating of my heart.

Above: Dragonfly, acrylic on tile, 12x12 inches. Copyright ptw 2006

Turn About

2010-08-14T21:13:00.000-04:00

I call them Chloe and Sparky. As creatures of grace and beauty perhaps better names would have been Cleopatra and Spartacus or at least Clarissa and Spencer, but they’re hummingbirds. Grandiloquent names are just wrong.

Sparky is a male ruby throat who is aggressive to the point of meanness. He fights. Chloe is a long, long, long suffering female who just wants to eat and eat and eat some more. There’s no such thing as a fat hummingbird, but she comes close. She is so well fed she has a hummingbird-sized spare tire, sort of a spare bottle cap.

Sparky dives at Chloe whenever he sees her. Chloe is cagey, able to hide in alternate eateries for hours. My yard is large with a mane of trumpet vine draped over the garage at one end, a bed of rampant monarda at the other and a bottle feeder in the center. I’ve placed a chaise by the feeder so each evening at dusk I can watch another episode of the long running humming bird soap opera, All My Days Flit About.

Ornithologists would be quick to point out that it is the hummingbird’s nature to try to chase other hummers from a territory. It can’t help its behavior. But I’ve been around animals most of my adult life, goats to ducks, chickens to horses; I’ve known too many animals too well to dismiss all behavior as instinct. Perhaps an animal can’t escape its nature, but it certainly can individualize itself within those limits. A hummingbird can’t be a cat, but it isn’t like other hummingbirds either. Sparky is a unique personality, aggressive, as his instincts require, but also stupid. And Chloe, also unique, can outsmart him.

She’s usually the first to approach the feeder. She hovers, looks me over, shifts position, hovers, and looks me over again to be sure it’s me. It took her about a week to figure out I was part of the food supply system. She made the connection the evening I hung out a fresh bottle so the nectar was still cold from the refrigerator. She took a sip, drew back in surprise, smiled at me and then gorged herself. Ice cold drinks on a hot day, yes. After a twirl or two around to check for Sparky, she usually settles on the feeder to eat. It’s rare to see a hummingbird still. Most hummers I’ve observed hover rather than perch on a feeder. Not Chloe. Her secret for fattening is sneaking rests along with those sips.

I don’t think Sparky has ever seen me. He’s so intent on drubbing Chloe that he streaks by me practically grazing my ear. He doesn’t stop to eat at the feeder either but keeps after her. Consequently he is scrawny, scruffy and underfed.

Chloe has a way of tilting her head when she’s thinking. She was eyeing the sky, head tilted, an evening or two ago. Sparky was on his belligerent way, but this time she didn’t flee. She had decided her sip and rest strategy had prevailed. She was now bigger than he was. She squawked. I didn’t know hummers could squawk. And then she chased him clear into the neighboring pasture.

I’ve seen Sparky since but he keeps his distance. Patience and a good plan can change the world order, even if physical realities seem to have us trapped. Thank you Chloe. I can use that thinking upon my own realities.

Above: Chloe and Sparky, pencil, 9x12 inches. Copyright ptw 2010.

New Labels

2010-07-31T20:51:00.002-04:00

It’s been almost a year since the terrible bleeding incident that upset my world and my world view. Overnight my self-image had to change to encompass illness. In a matter of hours last summer my identity had to shift to include the label, “One Who Is Chronically Ill.”

Parts of who I am were destroyed in those dreadful days too. “Person Who Works at a Job.” Gone. “The One with Boundless Energy.” Very, very gone.

But other labels grew stronger or endured. “Writer.” Stronger. “Gardener.” Less strong, but not gone. “Artist.” Much, much stronger. “Friend and Good Listener.” Definitely stronger. “Someone Who Can Sit and Watch a Moon Rise.” Reborn. “Someone Comfortable with the Silences of Her Mind.” A new and welcome arrival.

So I’ve gained and lost this year. A major shift in self perception such as I experienced last summer doesn’t settle gracefully, however. The oddest part of the journey has been the tools I chose to help me comprehend these gains and losses. Painting was important, obviously, and the one I’ve written about the most this year. But there were other tools.

The silliest to talk about and yet one of the most useful was “The Clean.” I wrote in my last blog that I used ferocious cleaning to delay varnishing paintings. But I’ve been thinking some more about that cleaning frenzy. It was too excessive even for staving off varnishing. I believe I was after something else. I wasn’t just cleaning. I was fighting.

I wrote last time how I cleaned house and garage for weeks, emptying and washing every drawer and shelf, every box and basket. On a surface level I suppose I was fighting for control. Cleaning is a simple way to exert order. But I certainly don’t need to wipe behind paintings or dust several hundred books, one at a time, to feel in control. Routine vacuuming can do that.

I think the cleaning became a way to say goodbye to the past. It was a form of grieving and also of welcoming the new. I do have a good life. I’ve become more aware of things around me and more patient with irritations. I laugh more. The cleaning seemed to give me permission to enjoy these things. I celebrated finishing The Clean by making cartoon labels for all the bins and drawers in my studio and utility room. If I also garnered a bit of control in the process, then what’s so bad about that?

Above, label for a drawer of small garden tools. Below labels for a recycle bin, hats, sewing notions, and paints.

The Varnished Truth

2010-07-11T10:29:00.000-04:00

Varnishing is the only painting task I hate. Cleaning brushes, sharpening pencils, preparing canvases, all boring but pleasantly so. I don’t mind those tasks. But varnishing is unpleasant. Varnish is smelly, sticky, finicky stuff. I can be very creative at finding ways to put it off.

The paintings have to be thoroughly dry so no moisture gets trapped under the varnish. I use acrylics so my canvases would be cured enough after four days. This time I waited about three months. Best to be safe, right?

The house has to be very clean to minimize any dust landing on a wet canvas. It would probably be enough to dust and vacuum the studio, but this time I cleaned the whole house: inside cupboards, drawers and closets, the tops of cabinets, behind paintings, the undersides of chairs. I washed all blankets and afghans. Aired area rugs and cushions. Sorted the junk drawer. Cleaned the refrigerator. It took six weeks. I had to clean the house again after cleaning the house because by the time I finished the odd places, the ordinary places needed vacuuming and dusting again. But it delayed the varnishing quite effectively.

The varnish must be mixed in a precise ratio of gloss to matte and I needed a glass container with an airtight lid to mix and store it. I’d tried plastic containers before but the harsh varnish chemicals softens them. So I was determined to find suitable glass. That took four weeks, most of which was spent forgetting that I was looking. Found the perfect jar at Big Lots where it had probably sat waiting for me for months.

The day has to be perfect. Not rainy or cold, so windows can be open. Not windy, so little dust comes in the open windows. Not humid, so the varnish will dry. Not too hot, so the varnish won’t dry too fast.

Yesterday was perfect. I had the glass container. And the house was clean. I could think of no other reason to delay. Plus a client was waiting for one of the paintings. I mixed the chemicals, brushed them on, smoothed and blotted drips. And waited. Five minutes, four minutes, three minutes, yes, there it was, right on cue. A dog hair.

As usual, one had stuck to the surface and, as usual, to remove it would ruin the careful brushing of the varnish. This is why I hate varnishing. No matter how hard I try, it’s never perfect.

Varnishing is necessary partly to boost the colors. The mixture gives a snap, a glow to the colors without making them shiny. But the real purpose is to preserve the painting for posterity, for centuries. This may be the true reason I’m uncomfortable with varnishing. Everything else about painting is enjoying the now. I freeze a moment of beauty and keep it safe. It is a moment of my life now. But varnishing requires that I believe the moment will outlive me. That means assuming others will cherish the moment too. I have trouble believing this. Varnishing is facing the immortal. I’m not yet brave enough to enjoy that much truth.

Hope

2010-06-20T11:49:00.000-04:00

I’m feeling an emotion I haven’t felt in almost a year. Hope. I’d forgotten what it feels like. A soaring sense of possibility begins to color reality, distorting it perhaps, but so pleasant, so very pleasant. Wisdom counsels that hope is illusion, but wisdom has no chance against the shoutings of hope.

On the surface not much has happened. I have made three trips to the Cleveland Clinic, two in May and one last week. Prognosis: unchanged. That’s good actually, but the reality is still my liver is failing and my days or years—who can say—are numbered.

There’s nothing they can do.

However, the doctor was concerned about my shortness of breath and ordered some heart tests. That was the second trip. The third trip was to see a cardiologist about those tests. The cardiologist thought my tiredness and shortness of breath might not be due to the liver, but perhaps to a sleeping disorder. In other words my grogginess may be unrelated to the liver disease.

There may be something they can do.

I have to go through tests and the end result may be some nasty facts that dash my hopes, but at the moment I’m hoping they can treat the grogginess and I will feel better. It wouldn’t change my fate; it will not change the path of my disease. But we’re fated from the day we’re born for only one end. I can handle that destiny. It’s feeling bad all the time that weakens the spirit. To have no hope of feeling better has been hard work this year. When the body is grumpy, living with joy is not easy. Living with joy seems to me the point of life, but this past year has put the philosophy to the test.

Now a dash of hope has been added to the mental stew that is my reality and everything has changed even though I do not (yet?) feel better. No wonder people invest in false hopes. Rushing into doomed marriages, taking debilitating jobs, ignoring chest pains, I think I understand why people do foolish things to keep hope alive even when reality is dreadful. Hope feels good.

I have been without hope for so many months. This small burst of hope is pure delight. It’s like a returning summer; the window opens to a pale sweet green. It is morning. And there’s much to do.

Above: Hope, photo illustration. Copyright ptw 2010.

Friendship and Solitude

2010-06-06T11:18:00.000-04:00

Friendship is a mystery to me. What have I given to have earned it? What am I doing right to be allowed to keep it? I am a person who likes my solitude, needs it, in fact. My mind is less alive when there is too much noise. The life of the mind is my life. I am, therefore I think.

But friendship is the opposite of solitude. A solitude-craving person should, logically, be a rotten friend. And, extending the logic, a rotten friend should have few friends. But though a poor friend, I am not poor in friends. This is a miracle that needs some explaining.

I have several friends who call just to check. I finished one such call yesterday and realized we had talked for twelve minutes. The topic of conversation for all twelve minutes was nothing. Nothing at all. Yet we were having a good time, with much laughter and the usual acknowledgements that the world makes no sense. A splendid gift, twelve minutes of nonsense, and a true gift; was I as giving in return? I called her back and told her we ought to be sisters; only relatives could talk so long about so little. I love freefall conversations like that, but how do we do it? The miracle and the joy is in the talking, but it is a mystery how friends talk so easily.

Some of my friends are specialists. I have one collection of movie buddies, another group of garden devotees, a huge contingent of dog aficionados, and a slowly growing cadre of art and craft enthusiasts. But most of my friends are just friends. How come? Again, the miracle defies logic.

I have friends I’ve known since college, meaning since the 1960s. I have friends I’ve just met. One of the qualities that defines these people as friends is our ability to pick up a conversation from where we left off, even if that conversation was twenty years ago.

Another of the qualities that defines us as friends is we almost never tell one another how much we mean to each other. My sister recently gave me a photo of two sticky frogs that I cherish and keep on my desk. The caption reads, “Good friends stick together.” A hand written note came stuck to it as well. It read, “Even great artists need cutesy crap on their walls; I’m lucky to have a sister who is a friend.” Not all relatives are friends, but all friends are relatives. There’s a miracle to ponder.

Gratitudes

2010-05-24T09:37:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when I’m blue, I like to think of small things I’m grateful for. Thinking of the big things is not always helpful, even if they’re as big as friends, family and faith. Little gratitudes ease distress better than big ones sometimes.

For example, I am grateful for:

*two-sided tape, paper clips in bright colors, sticky notes, the ball point pen;

*trowels with red handles, rain before dawn, the miracle of compost and quarter-inch hardware cloth for frustrating chipmunks;

*green abrasive pads, hot water and spray bottles;

*big purses with lots of zippers, orange sandals, key chains with lights;

*red coffee mugs, dark roasted whole beans, the noise of the coffee pot perking;

*the sight of a big dog at a full run, legs stretching as far as they can reach, ears streaming behind, tail straight and both of us smiling;

*a goldfinch on a thistle I missed in weeding, picking out seeds for his dinner; and—

*a good scolding from a mockingbird.

I feel better already and there’s much more stuff even littler than this yet to list.

Above: Fidelity, acrylic on canvas, 12x12 inches. Copyright 2008 ptw.

The Ask Thing

2010-05-02T13:05:00.000-04:00

Why is it so hard to ask others for help? I think I’ve managed all the other inconveniences of managing an illness. Less energy? No problem. Do less. Weird diet needs? No challenge. Eat suitably weirdly. Trouble sleeping? Easy. Sleep when I’m sleepy; enjoy being awake when I’m awake. It’s all so perfect, my new life. Except for asking whenever I need something.

The thing I need the most is for someone to feed the dogs when I go overnight to Cleveland. I’ve managed to become comfortable asking for someone to drive with me to the Clinic. The Clinic Guest House is lovely and there is a lot to do in the city—a zoo, museums, shopping. So I bill the request as a holiday and I feel better about the asking.

But asking for the smaller task of caring for the dogs has become hard for me. I’ve hit some inner resistance and keep putting off asking. I try to make the chore easier on me by using a friend rotation technique. That is, I spread my requests among people so no one gets hit too often. I believe I still have people on the list who are not yet exhausted by my needs or my dogs. The problem is not my friends, then. It’s me. I’m frozen inside; I’m exhausted from asking. I need a break from needing and I do not see one coming.

Seek and you shall find; ask and you shall receive the gospel says. I used to read that text as a warm, joyous promise of God’s goodness and perhaps on one level that is exactly what it means. Yet I’m starting to think the text was also giving us a challenge, a duty to understand that seeking is really about humility and acceptance. Asking is about admitting helplessness. If we can face helplessness perhaps then we have become truly pure of spirit. I suppose the text is telling me that I must keep trying not only to ask, but to ask without cringing.

I comfort myself for failing by believing that people do like being asked to help. And some even like my dogs.

Above: Fezzik and Mandy; pastel on board. Copyright 2010 ptw.

Tomorrow's Prayer

2010-04-18T09:30:00.000-04:00

I was studying these blogs the other day to see if any patterns have been emerging. Confronting mortality is an emotionally trying experience, so I was hoping to discover that at least I’ve been growing and learning from it.

I’m not sure yet about the growing or learning part, but I do see themes taking shape. One that has surfaced strongly in several essays is the need to let go of “planning for the future” or of “wanting tomorrow.” Something tickled my memory about that phrase, “wanting tomorrow.” At first I thought the spark was just recalling a movie line, perhaps Yoda scolding Luke, always his mind somewhere else, never on where he was now.

But that wasn’t the source. By chance—if there is such a thing as chance—I was asked to participate in a local church group discussion last week about spiritual journeys. I have a drawerful of prayers I’ve written over the years and I rifled through those looking to see what I could contribute to the conversation. There in a prayer I’d written over ten years ago was the phrase about wanting tomorrow.

I’m nondenominational, I belong to no church, and yet I do pray. I’ve written many of these prayers down to give to friends and have them lying in a drawer gathering dust. The one about wanting tomorrow I’d titled "Tomorrow’s Prayer."

I am watching a chickadee

toss away good seed from the feeder

to find one sunflower kernel

I am living my life like that,

tossing away perfectly good days

to get at the imagined future.

If I did not want tomorrow,

I would not suffer today.

Who am I to have become so greedy?

You have given me today.

How did I come to want tomorrow too?

Ten years ago I already knew what I need to do now. Let tomorrow go. I am beginning to suspect I already know all I need to know to face the years remaining to me. What I need to do to thrive is simply remember what I know. And I suppose I could pray more.

Above: The Chickadee, computer drawing. Copyright Patricia Tichenor Westfall 2010

Group C

2010-03-28T12:27:00.003-04:00

I think this painting, Trumpet Vine, is my best work, but no one has ever commented on it. The swirls in the background suggest the vine. The spots of bright light seem to be sun dapples pushing through dense foliage. I’ve hung the painting in a place of honor over my mantel, but people’s eyes slide over it. Instead they are delighted by Bottles on a Shelf (Jan. 24), or Something Comes (Nov. 29), or any of another dozen paintings I display at home. I offered it for sale in a gallery for a while, along with other floral subjects, and, again, nothing. People just did not see it. It was rejected.

Rejection is a great mystery to any creative person. Why does a movie or a play flop, a song disappear, a book go unread? What’s wrong with the work (or the artist’s thinking) that dooms it? I think every artist takes comfort from the stories of artists rejected in their day whose work endures—Mozart, Van Gogh, Dickinson. Call these the A Group artists. Also comforting are thoughts of successful artists whose work later withered, the B Group. Rarely mentioned by any artist is the C Group, artists whose work is ignored in its time and remains forgotten forever after. That is the painful reality for the majority of artists, but we do not discuss it. We know, however. I know I am and will continue to be part of Group C, unknown now, unknown later. I am invisible talent.

For artists like me, the question becomes how to live with this. We convince ourselves we create to please ourselves. Pleasing others is not important. Our work is its own reward. Group A artists write about the necessity of stubbornly holding on to their vision no matter what critics think. So we who are not to be them do the same. My craft, my vision. This will sustain me.

This is a lie.

Affirmation does matter. We do want other people to enjoy our offerings. What makes us human is our need for others and we do not cease to be human when we create. We hunger for recognition. Somebody look. I am and I matter. I live. My real motivation is the insane hope that someday I can like a Group A artist say, “I told you so.”

In the meantime, maybe I should try putting a spotlight on the painting.

Weeds

2010-03-14T10:23:00.001-04:00

Even before the last of the snow melts, the first spring flowers appear, but they’re not crocus. In my yard they are the royal blues of strangler ajuga and the fleecy white dots of chickweed. Tiny, tiny flowers on tiny, tiny weeds, green and blooming and smothering any emerging tulips and daffodils. The 2010 weed battle has begun.

Weeds, I think, are like chronic disease. I’d not had experience with chronic illness until this year, but I have years upon years of weed wisdom. If I’ve not yet come to terms with my illness, I have understood the purpose of weeding in life. I think the strategies I use for weeds apply directly to managing illness.

My first rule of weeding is to never give up. To stop weeding is to lose all hope of flowers. My second rule is the direct opposite of this, to never expect success. To weed believing I could actually clear the flowerbed is futile, a recipe for frustration. No matter how many weeds are pulled or how thickly mulch is piled, the weeds will return.

Living with such futility could lead to despair and I admit to dark moments of depression this past year. With my health I have been like the homeowner who avoids gardening by heaping a bed with lava rock and placing a lone juniper at center. It’s a workable strategy for landscaping and not all that ugly. The rock has a warm color and the juniper, if dull, is often not dead. Not dead is good. I’m newly enthusiastic about not dead these last few months.

But not dead is not living, just as lava rock mulching is not gardening. There is a third rule of weeding I follow and if I’m to stave off sadness, I have to learn to apply it as well. The rule is to fully accept the true purpose of gardening. Gardening is for the doing, not the having. I do not garden to have flowers. I like flowers, but that’s not the goal. I garden to do something rhythmic and eternal. I schedule weeding, I pick a bed, I begin to dig.

At first my thoughts wander, but after a few minutes I actually see each weed, noticing its leaves, flowers, roots; attacking each with a different strategy. I know the weeds better than the flowers I protect. If it is a good day then after a while not even the weeds remain in my mind. It becomes blank. I hear, see, smell, touch all, but filter nothing. My mind is open. And I fill with joy.

Fog

2010-02-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

Between snowfalls this week have been above-freezing periods when fog forms above the snow cover. This is the beginning of the spring fog season, despite the six inches of snow on the ground.

Fog season lasts from the first gray-on-gray snow mists of February through the gray-on-green mists of June, giving way only to the dryness of deep summer. During that time mists cluster nightly in hollows. At dawn they creep up hillsides to dissipate in orange sparkles as they encounter sunlight. The mists skitter across the roads or foment inside shrub clusters. Never predictable, yet always soft, mists are a constant of the spring here. I live on a knoll above hollows, streams, woods, and a winding road, so I have seen all these kinds of mists from inside, beside, and above.

Friends of mine have described living inside a disease as being in a fog. The metaphor is spoken as if it is a sadness. I think I agree there is a foglike quality to the reality of any trauma, emotional or physical, but sadness oversimplifies the accuracy of the metaphor. I have known moments of beauty that could have occurred nowhere else but from inside, beside or above a mist.

Once I was weeding at dawn in a mist so thick I could see only the flower bed and a few vague blots that were trees. I was clipping grass away from the rocks with shears when I noticed that every time I snipped, a mocking bird answered. I played with the bird. Me: snip; bird: snip. Me: snip, snip; bird: snip, snip. We sat invisible to each other, calling and responding a metallic music for many minutes. If the bird could have seen me, it would not have been tricked into singing with me. Only the mist let us come together.

Another time, I was up at the top of my knoll. A mist filled the valley below me stopping just at my feet. I stood in the clear before a cloud that looked solid enough to walk on. Above the fog was a full moon and inside it were hundreds of fireflies, small points of bright clarity, rising in syncopated flickerings toward the moon. Traumas are like that, illusions of solidity filled with glints of pure clarity.

Where Does...

2010-02-14T11:41:00.000-05:00

Where does a big dog sleep? Pretty much wherever he wants. In the case of this dog, Fezzik, my 80-pound, four-year-old, purebred mutt, the spot he wants most days is the back of the couch in my studio. The back is too narrow for him so he has to brace his leg against the seat to keep from sliding off.

I can’t imagine why he likes something so uncomfortable. Perhaps the ready view of the bird feeder it offers. All he has to do is lift his head and look to see if anything interesting is happening there, “interesting” being defined as a squirrel or rabbit. Perhaps it’s his way of annoying my other dog, a 40-pound, thirteen-year-old named Mandy, who does fit nicely on the back and doesn’t like it that he’s swiped her spot. Or perhaps he doesn’t know he doesn’t fit. He’s in denial.

Denial, I’m coming to realize, is a virtue, not a fault, a survival tactic of the highest order. When reality is unpleasant, reshape it in your mind to suit your desires and survive. Whether the stress is great or small, simply assuming it is small, does wonders for coping. Myself, I’ve raised denial to an art form. For many years I kept two In baskets in my office, one labeled “Deal With,” the other “Ignore.” The Ignore basket was always piled high and once every six months or so I’d sort it. Almost everything in it would be unimportant, or more likely, would have become unimportant by the time I handled it.

Fezzik’s talent for denial, however, has me thinking that humans didn’t invent denial, as I had thought. Its survival value in the evolutionary thread may be much older than humans. Perhaps the genes for denial were passed on to us by the half-fish, half-reptile relative who first crawled on dry land. “It’s not so bad,” the creature must have thought, and we’ve been denying the truth ever since. And coping.

Bread and Salt

2010-02-07T10:42:00.002-05:00

One item of advice from my doctor was to get “aggressive” about cutting my sodium intake. This meant more than not adding salt to food, he said, but to read labels. Read a milk label, he said, and prepare to be surprised at how much sodium it has.

I’ve been in label shock ever since. He recommended 1500 mgs or less of sodium a day. A tablespoon of soy sauce has 920 mgs, more than half my quota. Breads were another surprise. One slice usually has 200 to 300 mgs. A couple slices of toast in the morning and a sandwich at lunch and, boom, 1200 mgs, not counting fillings and toppings (or dinner). I decided to begin this project by reducing the sodium in bread. If that went well, then I would move on to the other major food groups, such as meats and cookies.

Most of the salt in commercial bread is a preservative, not flavoring. but some sodium is needed for slowing the rising action of yeast. After weeks of trial and error, I realized I couldn’t get a good loaf if I eliminated sodium entirely but I could at least reduce it. My final version below has a good flavor, toasts well, yet has only 35 mgs of sodium per LOAF (not slice!). The yogurt provides both sodium and acids for good rising. But because the bread has so little salt, it dries out faster than store bread so wrap well or freeze.

Patricia’s Low-Salt Bread

In a large bowl mix:

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups bread flour

1 Tbs. yeast

In a quart measuring cup mix:

½ cup plain or vanilla yogurt

¼ cup honey

water to equal three cups

Heat yogurt mixture in microwave to 115-120 degrees, approx 2-3 min on high. Add all at once to flour. Beat by hand or with mixer 2-4 minutes. Gradually beat in additional bread flour, 1 cup at a time until dough is “kneadable,” approx 3 cups.

Turn out on floured board. Knead until smooth and elastic, adding a little flour as needed. Raise in greased bowl in warm place until doubled, about an hour. Punch down. Raise again. Grease two pans. Shape into two loaves. Raise again. Bake in preheated 350-degree oven about 40 minutes until golden brown.

Tips: Success with lower-sodium dough, I’ve discovered, means being very careful with temperature. Test the water with a candy thermometer. Make sure the rising spot is truly warm, 80 to 90 degrees. My over-the-stove microwave has a light underneath so with the light on, the interior of the microwave is perfect. Or put a pot of boiling water in the oven with the dough. Actually preheat the oven; don’t cheat; preheating makes a difference in the final taste of the bread. Oh, and one more thing, make sure the grease for bowls and pans is unsalted. I use unsalted butter.

One of these low-sodium loaves was the model for today’s drawing.

Absurd Endeavors

2010-01-31T11:15:00.011-05:00

Another trip to the Cleveland Clinic this week, this time for a “transjugular biopsy.” It was an elaborate procedure that ran a catheter through a vein in my neck into the liver for a peek and a pinch.

I was feted to a full-size, looks-just-like-the-ones-on-TV operating room. I had two nurses, a technician and two doctors, one senior with white hair and one young with a sounds-just-like-the-ones-on-TV British accent. And they gave me a gown, a real hospital gown with gaps in improbable places.

My sister, Mary, was my guardian angel for this episode. The main building is splashed invitingly with natural light. This allowed me to use my finely honed observing skills to scan the large, comfortable waiting rooms, some with pianos, others with colorful wall graphics and plants, many of them real. While not disguising the hospital qualities of the building, these made them seem less overt. Mary spent her observing electrodes on more practical matters, like checking for wireless reception and outlets for her laptop.

It was hard to grasp the size of the place since strategically placed elevator banks minimize endless hallway wandering, a blessing because most clients would not be up to major hikes. However, there are clues to the scale in odd details, such as the facts that the waiting rooms have subwaiting rooms and the reception desks have secondary reception desks.

The operating room for the procedure was in a basement and there was an industrial feel at that level. Down the center of the hall an endless river of automatic trolleys sedately rolled by on a pair of tracks. The trolleys, stainless steel flats actually, were empty going one way and loaded going the other. The empty ones could hold a person comfortably and I had this sudden vision of an assembly line, with patients like cars, going forth to stops on the line, one for a bolt turn here, another for a wheel fitting or distributor cap there.

The idea was totally unfair to the Clinic, of course. People were unfailingly warm, courteous, and competent. I had expected a cold reserve. When your every patient is desperately ill, wouldn’t you need to keep an emotional distance to stay sane? I think I would. Much of my time these past few months has been spent trying to think around the enormity of what is happening to me, rather than embrace it. Yet the Clinic staff seems to have been taught a different strategy. Embrace the suffering, acknowledge it, seems to be their philosophy.

My seeing an assembly line was totally at odds with what I was experiencing, yet ever since seeing the sign “Subwaiting Room,” I was primed for absurdity. And the world provides what I wish to see. The next absurdity was the walk, yes walk, to the operating room; I carried my boots and parka, the nurse carried my tote bags. Cataloging absurdity may have been using my finely honed observing skills to distort reality, but it got me through a tough day. I’ll not apologize for seeing silly things but I will agree that I need to think more deeply about this conflict between my perceptions and the reality.

Above: The Goddess of Absurd Endeavors, digital drawing. Copyright 2004 ptw.

Bottles on the Shelf

2010-01-24T12:37:00.002-05:00

I needed dog food the other day and went to the Place Where Dog Food Is Found. Begins with a W. (I’m old enough to remember when that sentence would make people think of Woolworth’s.) The modern Place of W is an unyielding budget buster for me. I can’t go in and buy just one thing. All I needed was dog food, but by the caprice of misaligned aisles and inviting random tables I found myself instead in the cosmetics section, the section furthest from the dog food, of course. The Place of W has that effect on me.

Among the almost food-like bottles on the shelf, such as Honey Spice face powder or Melon Soufflé lipstick, I found a hand lotion, Calming Crème.

Calming Crème. Wouldn’t that be a joy if it were possible to have calm just by a lotion? Slather on ease. Rub in inner peace. Yes. And cheap too. Only$7.97.

I’ve learned in the past few months that seizing calm is about the only way to get through some of this ordeal. Every conversation with a doctor holds terrors. I am getting quite adept at forging a neutral face, asking intelligent questions, and even finding blessings in the news. But the reality is, those conversations with doctors leave me reeling. Later I have to work hard to calm down and get on with things.

My doctor called last week with results of some recent specialized tests. Two of the three were positive for autoimmune disorders. So there it is, at last, a possible cause of the liver failure. The news was by phone, so my face needed no guarding. But I managed the requisite intelligent question, what could cause autoimmune failure. Answer: don’t know. Yet. The blessing I dutifully found was, I could quit worrying that the blow-in insulation I had put in my house twenty-two years ago was the source of my illness.

But I lost all calm after I hung up. I could not sleep that night and didn’t doze until about five a.m. Trying to will myself into calm did not seem possible this time. There was no logic to my feelings, I knew. I was no worse off than before the call. Yet this time I was not strong enough to fight off the terror.

That’s why, in pursuit of dog food, my accidentally stumbling across (or being led to?) the calming crème shelf seemed so fortuitous. I smiled to see it. I’m rational enough to know it’s just a hand lotion. And yet, since I couldn’t seize calm that day by willing it, why not try the cream? At $7.97 plus tax, it couldn’t hurt.

I’m sleeping better now. And my hands feel softer too.

Here Be Dragons

2010-01-18T10:41:00.001-05:00

My project last week was dragons. At dinner a few weeks ago, friends and I were discussing the current popularity of fantasy in fiction and movies. Being an overeducated bunch, I think we squandered ten seconds pretending to care what the surge in literary dragons says about our culture. Fortunately for us, our desire for silliness won the table duel and we spent a good deal more time wondering what our taste in dragons says about ourselves instead.

Our choices from current pop culture offerings are many. The simplest are blocker dragons—big, strong, scaly brutes that stand (hover?) between a hero and a goal. These have to be killed. No subtlety. Not much fun either.

Puzzle dragons are also big, strong and scaly, but smart. With these, the hero does best who can outtalk the monster. Strabo in Terry Brooks’ Kingdom of Landover novels is a dragon of this sort—grumpy, but surprisingly honest for a villain, and quick with a crisp insult.

A big fad in dragon concepts lately seems to be the companion dragon, one linked telepathically or otherwise to the hero who will fight his battles with him. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series explores what if dragons had been weapons in the Napoleonic wars. Donkey’s dragon in the Shrek movies, Saphira in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle and the handy travel-sized dragon, Mushu, in Disney’s Mulan are other examples. In these stories the dragon is on your side and loves you.

Myself, I like pathetic dragons. My favorite is the endangered swamp dragon species in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. These are in danger of exploding every time they sneeze. And they sneeze a lot.

We didn’t go into the psychological questions, but I found myself thinking about those later. Why are our dragons so big? Perhaps because our problems are big and we want our displacement metaphors to be large enough to hold them? Why scales? Dragons are often colorful, beautiful, but never furred or feathered. Maybe we want to be tough enough to never feel afraid? Why fire? Even the sad swamp dragons can breathe flame. Power, I suppose, but power for what? The fire is always a weapon, never healing. Dragons destroy, not create.

Why do we need them? What do they do for us we cannot do with gentler metaphors?

I’m not sure, but I’ve spent the week doing sketches, and I’m afraid that, so far, my dragons are only cute, not scary. I just can’t do terror yet. But I plan to keep trying. These days I need a good terror displacement.

Snowed In

2010-01-10T10:38:00.000-05:00

I love being snowed in. Friday roads and schools closed here. The radio thrilled with alarms and cautions while the soft cotton of the flakes filled imperfections of the land, including the scar of my driveway. There was nothing I could do. I was trapped by a deep, perfect inconvenience.

I suppose part of my pleasure was from the beauty of a storm, but part came from having no choices too. I must stay home. Whatever else I had planned had to be relinquished. Inconvenience is freeing. With less opportunity, I fret less over what I can’t do and enjoy what I can do. Both dogs got a thorough brushing Friday. All three of us enjoyed that.

Illness limits me now in ways similar to that snowstorm. There is nothing I can do; I am trapped by the inconvenience. But as the weeks go by, I’m caring less and less about what I can’t do. I’m deeply immersing myself in what I can do. I’m enjoying life in ways I couldn’t before. Before I had too many choices. Every choice I made left me aware of all the things I wasn’t doing. Now about all I can do is paint, read, and play with the dogs. Why would anyone be sad about that?

People seem unable to hear me when I try to explain this. Questions, especially from people who haven’t seen me in a while, are always about what “they” are going to do for me. There’s nothing they can do, I explain. What will the treatment be? There is no treatment, I explain. Well then if they’re doing nothing I must be getting better and they’re so happy I’m getting well and hope I continue to heal. That I won’t get better is too hard to hear. I’m getting to the point of fearing social events because I hate to see people’s discomfort with the deep, perfect inconvenience I live with.

I can understand their discomfort. How the phrase “there’s nothing they can do” chilled me at first. We always want to fight. We don’t bow easily to inconvenience. The blizzard comes and we jump into our cars, forge out onto the icy roads and slip into ditches and other cars. When the driveway is buried, choosing to leave the car in the garage smacks of quitting. But trapped as I am, I’ve never felt more alive. The beauty of my days, like this snow in drifts across the neighboring hills, is a freedom I’ve never known. Why would anyone be sad about that?

Ignore the Stains

2009-12-20T17:08:00.000-05:00

What is it about rough studies that seem so free and spontaneous? Maybe the fact that they are free and spontaneous. But then why can’t I keep that same looseness in a final painting? I begin a painting with a black pencil sketch, usually on brown wrapping paper. After correcting lines, I work up a drawing in pastels on board or paper to get a sense of the coloring. Then I render the painting on canvas with acrylics or oils or often both.

The drawing may take an hour or two, the pastel study a day or two, and the painting a month or two. Maybe this is the crux of the problem. The more time I give to something the less spontaneity it contains. I think I need to make paintings as quickly as my studies because my time is dwindling.

Like everyone, I’ve been taught that the central message of life is to live every day as if it were my last. Or my first. A quick scan of any quotations reference turns up tons of variations on this motif; one database I looked at had eight-five pages of wise living two-liners. A sampling (from www.quotegarden.com):

Live the present moment wisely. Siddhartha
Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Keats or Flaccus (or both)
In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Lincoln
There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want. Calvin and Hobbes
We’re always getting ready to live but never living. Emerson
Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you. Dillard
Sit on the grass; don’t worry about the stains. Bombeck

That last was easily the wisest snippet I came across. But all the quips say the same thing, that life is too easily diluted. If I’ve nodded in lifelong agreement to this philosophy, I have just as noddingly spent that life unwisely, awash in distorted priorities. With future time shrinking, it ought to be easier for me to focus on the nothing I want and seize my days. But spending time on present moments is just as hard as it ever was.

At least now I want to try harder. Being spontaneous matters if for no other reason than it’s efficient. My goal with this painting, Three Tulips, then, will be to try as hard as I can to make the final painting as exuberant as the pastel study. I owe it to my disappearing future to learn to live present moments well, with an abundance of stains. We shall see if I succeed. I’ll post the finished painting here when it is done.

Note: I’m taking two weeks off; will return on January 10. Happy holidays everyone and thanks for reading!

Pulling Cords

2009-12-13T19:24:00.003-05:00

The drawing for this week is supposed to be the God of Lawnmower Pull Cords. He’s part of a series of gods and goddesses I’m working on with names like the God of Interminable Meetings, the Goddess of Aging Appliances, the Goddess of Weeds That Spread by Root Runner, the God of Surprising Allergies, and many more.

This god's anvil-encased hands and eternally upended body sums up my relationships with all two-cycle engines over the decades (or at least their pull cords). But looking at him after events of the last two weeks, I’ve given him a temporary new name, the God of How I Feel at the Moment.

I can’t say much has changed since my visit to the Cleveland Clinic. It’s just that I understand it all better now. I knew before that I had end stage liver disease. My liver is working sort of like a sputtering lawn mower, and it could keep on working for many years. But its poor functioning is causing complications for the rest of my body and those complications could strike at any time. In other words, I could live another couple of decades. Or I could die tonight. I knew that already.

Cause was unknown before. Cause is unknown now, but my doctor at the clinic wants to find out why. So do I. None of the usual causes seem to apply in my case. The clinic is not just an end-stage care facility; it’s a research institution, so since I am a mystery, I will be making more trips to Cleveland for tests.

There are four main complications: 1) gastric bleeding; that was the August event and could happen again although the medications I’m taking should help prevent it; 2) cancer, always a risk of developing with liver disease; the first of the planned tests should reveal whether that is present; 3) ascites or fluid in the abdomen, dangerous if it becomes infected; and 4) mental confusion.

This last one scares me the most even though it’s the least deadly. Toxins will build up in my body because of the poor liver functioning and my brain will start to flounder. I told the doctor I was sure I’d had no episodes of confusion yet. He bluntly—but with a smile—said I’d probably be the last to know. So friends and family are alerted; watch for loss of mental functioning. My sister pointed out, again with a smile, I’ve been spacey for years; who’d notice?

I wonder what the first symptoms will be? Botching verb/subject agreements? Mixing up it’s and its? Inability to choose colors for paintings? Will I be able to keep painting? I look at my contorted Pull Cord god and realize, constrained as he is, he can still function. That is me. I can still function. I will paint until the brush falls from my fingers. The paintings may be a little confused, but in this era of fantasy art, who’d notice?

Above: The God of Lawnmower Pull Cords, digital drawing. Copyright 2008 ptw.

In Progress

2009-12-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

I'm still processing all that I learned from my time at the Cleveland Clinic last week. Like the sketch at left, my thinking is a work in progress. I'll have an essay next week.

Until then...

Something Comes

2009-11-29T21:54:00.004-05:00

This is the painting that came from the gestures exercise several weeks ago (see October 18 essay). Off to the Cleveland Clinic tomorrow.

Blue

2009-11-22T11:27:00.007-05:00

My brother died of cancer about 15 years ago and his last days were difficult. He spent them at home with the help of Hospice. My mother, sisters, and I often stayed at the house those last days to help his wife with his care. One morning I was there alone with him. He was semi-conscious and in severe distress. I didn’t think he was aware I was there. I was angry to see him suffer so. I wouldn’t let a dog suffer like that, I thought; why must I let my brother suffer so?

That was what I thought before noon. After noon he felt a little better and managed to get up. We sat in their living room, I built a fire in the fireplace, and we talked about blue. I had been studying the color. I like to do that sometimes, take a topic and research it until I can find nothing more.

He’d gotten interested in the topic too, so we traded information that cool spring morning about the occupant of the 450-490 nanometer portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, in English called “blue.”

The word “blue” seems to have evolved from the Old Norse word “bla” which in turn comes (perhaps) from the Indo-European “bhêl” for flash or burn. Some languages have no word for blue, one of us had discovered. These languages use what linguists call a “grue” word for both green and blue colors. The lack of words, however, has nothing to do with perception. (I think he did the biology portion of the research.) The eye is able to perceive and distinguish among over 16 million colors even if no words can describe this variety.

Blue has almost always been a sacred color. (I did the history angle, of course.) Although the ancient Egyptians had no word for blue, they revered it so highly it could only be used for the faces of gods and pharaohs. To the woodland Indians of North America, blue symbolized peace, but light blue represented birth and day and peace among tribes. Dark blue represented night and the ultimate peace of death. The Mayans assigned colors to compass directions. North was white; south, yellow; west, black; east, red; but most significant, the center, the point of stillness, was blue.

Blue has been thought to have healing powers. Even as late as the 1930s, field nurses reported that most English school children wore blue beads to prevent colds. The children of Israel were commanded to make blue fringes on their garments in the Old Testament for protection. Blue garters were supposed to cure gout.

There was more, much more we discussed about blue. I treasure that conversation as I treasure few others. He died two days later. If my anger had flared in a culture that insists on the relief of suffering, I would never have had that moment with him. We run from suffering, forgetting that every moment is worth the living. Life is that precious.

Solutions

2009-11-15T12:15:00.002-05:00

For much of my adult life, my chief function as a professor has been to take complexity and break it into bullet points, a game well understood by students. If something were caged in a bullet point, they must write it down because it will be on the test. If not so contained, they can relax and go back to texting their friends.

The bulleting process came easily to me. Take, for example, my three laws of design. (Three bullet points, three test questions.) They are:

Law One. All design is solving problems.
Law Two. All design problems have solutions.
Law Three. All design solutions create new problems.

To illustrate, if a layout were too cluttered (the problem), then arranging elements into groups and separating the groups would make the layout less busy (the solution) but that might force items into illogical groupings (the new problem). I always ended that particular lecture by asserting that if you substituted the word “life” for “design” you had a pretty workable philosophy of life too.

All life is solving problems. The garage is too cluttered.
All life’s problems have solutions. Divide the garage in half, gardening stuff on the left, recycling on the right and anything not fitting those two categories won’t belong in the garage.
All life’s solutions create new problems. What about the car and the birdseed?
New solution. Make an exception for the car; move the birdseed to the laundry room.
New problem. The laundry room is too cluttered….

For years these little maxims worked. They still work for little problems, but I’ve just discovered they are useless for a truly big one.

The problem. I have a deadly disease
The solution. There’s nothing they can do.
The problem. There’s nothing they can do.

My first appointment to begin talking about a transplant is in Cleveland in early December. A good thing I don’t have to teach about this, I’d be bulletless and speechless.

Control

2009-11-08T14:53:00.005-05:00

Acrylics, the medium I use most, are almost impossible to control. They dry rapidly, so a color that is flowing smoothly becomes sticky in about ten minutes. They vary in transparency, with some colors completely covering paint underneath and others allowing tones to blend through. Purposeful transparency is called glazing in oil painting, but is more a nuisance than a technique in acrylics. It’s difficult to define thin lines or hold strong brush strokes for textures with acrylics. And the colors are always too bright for natural themes.

The only thing easy about acrylics is the clean up, just soap and water. The easy cleaning is why I started with acrylics, but I stay with them because I’m stubborn that way. I like to control things. My desk is tidy, my cupboards and drawers are orderly, my closets sorted. This causes much comment from saner, more rational people, those who believe a tidy desk is symptom of a diseased mind. I like tidy; the impossibility of maintaining order appeals to me. My defense to friends and family is that I think a clean closet is like the soul, hidden but it ought to be beautiful. No one’s ever said this to me, but perhaps they’ve thought it, that if I spent as much time on my soul as I spend on my closets, I’d be transcendent by now.

All that is prelude to try to explain why the last week has been so painful. I’m aware now of how ill I am. The illness itself doesn’t scare me. I’m in little pain and I know from a lifetime of back trouble that pain is, well, controllable. But illness is not. I have no control over what happens to me from now on. On an intellectual level I know that I have been given a great gift—time, maybe years, to reflect and grow as an artist and a soul. Being ill focuses thinking. Introspection becomes as urgent as breathing. I know few people are given context and freedom for deep reflection. All I have to do to harvest this treasure is to relinquish the need for control.

All? Nothing I’ve ever done seems harder. I want to manage this illness, control it. But there’s nothing I can do. To grow wiser I have to accept that, let go.

Many artists who paint with acrylics use flinging techniques. They toss paint at their canvases, compose wide, wild swatches of simple colors or restrict their forms to simple shapes. They let the accident will the painting. The best way to handle acrylics is to not control them.

Thing is, I’ve never liked those sorts of paintings. I can’t see me becoming a wild-eyed, static-haired flinger. At the moment I don’t even want to try. I like control. How am I to have my control and fling it too? This is a problem. Yet as I used to tell my students, all problems have solutions.

And all solutions create new problems.

Stark Reality

2009-11-02T07:54:00.003-05:00

Hard frost last night, the first this season. There have been light frosts in recent weeks, but this one, just now visible in the dawn light, has left long swaths of rime on the lower slopes of the hills below my house. The light has blended from its first purples to orange. In all, a textbook dawn, no flaws.

I am qualified to evaluate dawns because my sleeping has become splintered into short snaps. Whether by will or accident I seem to have timed my sleeping fragments so I am often wakeful at dawn, the best light for critical thought. Or painting.

At the doctor’s Friday, finally had the conversation I’ve been waiting for and dreading. I’m healed enough from the August bleed to contemplate the big picture, the frost on the far slopes. I have a liver disease. NAFLD. I’m in the end stages. There’s nothing they can do.

The doctor sketched my liver on the paper covering the examining bench, explained what my blood numbers meant, talked about what I can expect as the disease progresses. We speculated on causes. My theory is a prescription medication I took for many years; his is fructose in processed foods, but the truth is we don’t know. If I were a drunk, we might suspect that as the cause, but I’m not and so we don’t know why. At this point would it matter if we did?

My liver is going to fail. When is the more important question.

Even though most of my liver is scar tissue, I could probably live out my natural span. The disease is that slow, he said. The complications from the disease are more likely to kill me than the disease itself. Since only a small portion of my liver is working, the blood to be processed backs up and causes all sorts of uproar, the bleed in August being one of the deadliest. And there’s not much they can do to manage the complications either. Keep my blood pressure low; minimize acid in the stomach; eat carefully; avoid colds; exercise lightly. And start talking to the Cleveland Clinic about a liver transplant. Their job, the doctor bluntly explained, will be to find reasons not to put me on a waiting list for a transplant.

I was grateful for his bluntness. Stark reality is so much easier to deal with than denial or hope. Just get on with things; just live. In a way, I’m fortunate. If I had end stage kidney failure, I’d be on dialysis now and uncomfortable most of the time; if heart failure, I’d be bedridden and in terrible pain. End stage liver disease, no pain. Except for the constant fatigue, it’s not so bad. I can live with this, one dawn at a time. Painting is going to be very important now. Wonder if reality will impact my art?

Repeating Frogs

2009-10-25T18:06:00.006-04:00

Some artists obsessively repeat motifs in their work. They spend their lives redoing a painting, endlessly exploring a theme or device or color scheme. I’ve never understood this. I tend to get bored with an idea and want to move on to something else. What is the point of repetition?

Monet’s haystacks are one extreme example of repetition as life choice. Once I saw at an exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute of a dozen or so of his haystacks arrayed in a large room to follow the light around from sunrise to sunset. It was possible to stand in the entrance to this room and see the changes the daylight made on a haystack. Monet’s focus on light change was like that of a scientist trying to manage an experiment by controlling one variable. Only light changed. And with that one change, everything changed.

Yet I don’t think his paintings would endure if they merely explored technique. There must be more to this repetition than technical study. I decided the best way to understand repetition was try it myself. For my first experiment I limited my palette to single color families such as gold, red, purple, green, grey. This idea yielded some pleasant but overly realistic floral studies.

For a second experiment, I tried confining a palette to colors of tiles from the Talavera region in Mexico, electric blues, oxide reds, hard greens. Vase with Flowers (see September 7) was part of this series. I liked these paintings but I can’t say I understood Monet’s haystack obsession better because of this experiment. I was more than ready to move to a new theme after a few months. Monet had explored his haystacks for years.

I’m now trying a frog obsession. I impose no color, light or composition rules on myself, just subject matter, and I think I’m finally beginning to get it. The lines of a frog’s body are fun. The stomach is comic, the eyes pop, the toes splay and curl. Every line is almost a jump. Even a sitting frog is active. Frogs, if not an obsession yet, have at least become fascinating to me, but the fascination is not in the frog. It’s with potential movement. Monet’s haystacks when displayed by changing daylight, moved with the day. They were a movie. My frogs cannot sit still. They want to move.

I think the lesson from this experiment is that artists are always chasing what they cannot have. A musician cannot have color. A filmmaker cannot have the silence of the soul. A novelist cannot have a wordless sunset. And a painter cannot have movement. Part of becoming an artist is to chase the unseekable. I paint my frogs over and over because I want to dance.

Gesture Lines

2009-10-18T22:47:00.025-04:00

This has been a tough week. Why? Because I feel better yet not enough better. For the last two months I’ve slept or sat. That was fine as long as I was too weak to want much else. But now I’m stronger. Still weak, but strong enough to get to a few social events, if only briefly. Strong enough to visit the flower beds in my yard, not strong enough to actually weed them. Strong enough to set out ingredients for making bread, not strong enough to bake it. The frustration has me in a temper. But I’m too tired to vent it.

Painting, specifically gesture lines, offered some guidance for me in this phase of healing. I assume it’s a phase since everyone I’ve talked with who has had surgery or an illness seems to know about this state of mind. Better but not better enough is very bad.

The textbook definition of a gesture line is it's the simplest representation of an object. For example, from left to right above, are gesture lines for a book, tree, elephant, dachshund, and van. If the last three look alike, they are. I used the same gesture lines. A lot of things are similar when simplified.

My style, though, is to push past mere objects and see if a gesture line can be emotion. At far left is the line that seemed to best sum up my week only what did I say to me? I tried to figure that out by expanding the line into drawings. One became an arm tossing a ball. Am I trying to fling away my problems? Another bit of doodling gave me a fish. Do I feel trapped, about to be snared on a hook? Yet another squiggle session gave me a dog begging for a play session.

The dog seemed closest to my true mood when I first drew it. Maybe my real frustration is I’ve been too weak to use this time off work for some genuine goofing off. This insight did not fully satisfy, though, and I tried again. Using the same gesture line once more gave me the horse in flight below. Rotating the line clockwise gave me the lazy grazer below it.

The flighty horse knows something comes and wants to run; the lazy horse knows something comes as well but is willing to pretend to some normalcy. Both are me at the moment. Something very big is out there and I don’t know what to do.

I’ve done this exercise before, though never when the stakes actually mattered. In the past, tossing a few gestures around helped build a composition.This time the doodling reduced my illness to simple expression, easier to understand. Didn’t solve anything, but understanding at least eased my bad temper.

If a painting grows from this, I’ll post it here when I finish it. In the meantime I’m wondering if this sort of exercise is thinking as an artist does? Or am I just stalling to avoid painting? Or healing?

Yes, No, Maybe

2009-10-12T13:01:00.005-04:00

Miracle Max’s idea of “mostly dead” leads me to another Maxism, namely that there’s nothing better in the world than true love, except of course for a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Hang on to that idea for a minute, that there’s something better than the best thing in the world. Becoming a painter, an artist, would be the best thing in the world for me right now if I knew what art was. Thousands of essays, books, college courses, and street brawls have tried to define art and artists. I think they even quarreled about the question while doing the cave paintings.

I’ve not read thousands of essays, but I have read scores. The oldest aesthetics essay I’m familiar with is Plato’s dialogue on the beautiful cooking pot. The pot is useful; can it be beautiful? No, yes, or maybe? I’ve studied the history of the debate too. It’s cruel. Consider the French Academy rejecting Pissarro’s purple-tinged trees or the booing of Dylan at Newport for using an electric guitar. In time the artists’ views prevailed, but the times were brutal as they were changing.

I thought for a time that rancor clogs the debate whenever it focuses on art instead of the artist. Art may not be in the having but the doing, I argued. This was a bad idea, however, because shifting the question from art to the artist doesn’t resolve it. Monet paints. The lady who makes toaster covers for a Christmas bazaar sews. Both are creative. Are both artists? Same question, same outcome: No, yes, and maybe.

We are searching for a ruler, a scale, or a measure when we attempt to define art or artists, but measuring may be the problem. If true love (or true art), measurably the best thing in the world, can be bested by a good sandwich, maybe measuring is pointless. No, yes, or maybe?

Dismissing the debate as pointless would be an elegant solution if the debate were really about art. It’s not. It’s about money. I began my return to painting in 2005 by using ceramic tiles as surfaces. These tiles were rejected by galleries as “mere craft objects.” I’ve transferred the same techniques and subjects to canvas and now my paintings hang in these same local galleries. What’s the difference, other than one gets a price tag and the other is in a box under my workbench? Which is art and why?

Clearly I need a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Meaning Mostly

2009-10-05T09:00:00.005-04:00

While I was in intensive care, I spent a couple of minutes being what Miracle Max in The Princess Bride would call “mostly dead.” My heart rate dropped precipitously and I could feel myself pulling away. It felt good actually. Dying is not all that bad.

Beepers went crazy. Doctors and nurses burst into my room. “Keep the shot ready; don’t use it yet,” a doctor told a nurse who held a heart stimulant. They stood in a row at the foot of my bed watching, not me, but the monitor above me. All had the exact same expression, eyes tight, mouth slightly slack jawed, shoulders tense. In short, they looked exactly like people studying airport monitors. I’ve seen that look hundreds of times: has my connection left already, is the plane on time, which gate?

I thought they looked hilarious and decided if this was my last moment, I was grateful it was funny. With that thought I came back. My heart rallied and steadied without the stimulant. Laughter, apparently, is an irresistible call to life.

So much of art is comic, full of visual puns and jokes. Picasso’s Blue Guitarist seems on the surface to be about a broken, dying man strumming a battered guitar, but a second look at the brush stroking reveals he’s actually fondling a young woman. Is it Hans Holbein who painted a somber, newly married couple but worked a skull into the rug at their feet? A dim view of marriage, perhaps, but funny. There’s an all black painting in the Chicago Art Institute; it always makes me laugh to see a nonpainting hung importantly on an important wall. For a time at the Institute there was even a nonpainting hung on a nonwall. The painting, Gray, I think it was called, was actually a hole in the wall.

I love stuff like that. They remind us that no matter how serious the moment or how seriously we take ourselves, that in the end, most of what we are is silly, a reality that makes life bearable, despite the pain, or the temptation to run from it. Art and life are both meant to be funny.

Perspective

2009-09-28T11:54:00.008-04:00

One of my favorite songs is Nanci Griffith’s “From a Distance.” From a distance, she sings, problems shrink and everyone looks like a potential friend. The song celebrates a peculiarity of human vision, because things do not get smaller the farther away they are. Things only seem to diminish because the eye does not see reality. Reality is three-dimensional. The eye is two-dimensional.

The retina of the eye, where perception occurs, is almost as flat as an artist’s canvas. On a flat surface objects are distorted. Lines converge. Shapes bend into ovals or trapezoids. Distances become bluer, blurrier, softer.

Our eyes see poorly, so our brains do the real work of seeing by translating this garbled information. The brutal brain is so strong that it will not let us even comprehend our own misperceptions. Most of us can’t draw because knowledge of reality is too powerful. We simply cannot see the illusions we see.

Renaissance painters had to develop perspective to understand two-dimensional distortions. The irony, of course, is the more these artists succeeded in recording the eye’s distortions, the more real the paintings looked. Our brains may translate, but they need the misinformation first.

I think I’ve been trying to heal by trying to comprehend reality. But maybe I’d be a better master of healing if I tried to perceive the illusions instead. Lines converge. Things get smaller. Colors soften. Suffering ends. Discomfort diminishes. Fear softens.

Line

2009-09-20T09:03:00.002-04:00

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but I’m beginning to think straight lines are best only for practical matters. Thomas Jefferson, when designing the gardens at Monticello, laid out his practical vegetable gardens in straight, narrow lines, but his flower gardens were all curves. Art, like flower gardens, is meant to be curvy.

I wonder if healing is meant to curve as well. I have been attempting these last three weeks to create some kind of daily rhythm, to organize my days with regular events: breakfast at 8; sketch at 1; nap at 3. I have failed. Every day is chaos and surprise, sometimes caused by the intrusive doctors who control events for me now, sometimes caused by my own physical weakness. I nap a lot, but not rhythmically. I nap when I need to, not when I plan to.

I used to think that rhythm was the essential ingredient in discipline. If I had regular times for art, writing, grading, gardening or friends placed as firmly in my schedule as times for teaching, then I accomplished things. The many articles, books and paintings I’ve produced over my career convinced me that discipline is linear, the straight line of time.

Now I’m not so sure. My days are chaos; they are like lines that have been bent back upon themselves. Yet I’m still producing. Not a lot, true, but the chaos is not empty.

If I look honestly at lines in my drawings, I see now that rhythmically spaced lines produce just rhythmically spaced lines and not much else. It is the irregularly spaced lines, the chaotic ones, that contain all that is human. Lines spaced closely together are shadow and pain; lines spaced far apart are highlights and happiness. Lines cross-hatched are texture and complexity. Thick lines are boldness and strength; thin lines are elegance and subtlety. Lines that meander are motion and dance. And lines that bend back upon themselves are the spirit of the wind itself.

Composing the Image

2009-09-12T13:06:00.006-04:00

I felt strong enough this morning to do some weeding. That might have been pushing things, but it seems common sense to me that to heal I must push my current limits. I know if I push too hard, I could slow healing, but if I don’t push at all, I could delay healing more.

When I came back into my studio, I kicked my clogs off and looked at my paintings. I noticed that almost all were tidily encased within the edges of their canvases. Only Pink broke through the limits of its borders. Is the same common-sense idea of pushing limits as true for composing paintings as it is for healing?

An edge creates and defines a space. Within that space, the center is found by drawing two diagonals to connect opposite corners. The center of a painting is calm, stable; too stable for most artists. Stability equals stasis in art. A painting needs energy, not calm. Motion, not stasis, creates meaning.

That much I seem to have understood before, but why have I not applied the same ideas of motion and energy to edges? I don’t know. It’s such an obvious tactic for opening a painting’s potential. This will change today; edges will shatter.

Perhaps if I were seeking inner peace, then the center, the point of stillness, would be the place I’d need. But a still, small place is not helpful in either the fight to heal or to become an artist. There is a time for stillness, but I must not let it be now.

Choosing a Subject

2009-09-07T08:51:00.006-04:00

A visitor to Matisse’s studio saw a painting of a vase of flowers on the wall and commented that Matisse must have been very happy when he painted it. “No, madam,” Matisse reportedly said. “I was in the darkest despair."

All good paintings are about something, but to be art they must contain ideas. The ideas are the difference between empty renderings and paintings that endure. Viewers know this – the visitor saw happiness even before she saw flowers. But when do artists see the ideas within their subjects? Matisse, from a near suicidal state, painted joy. Did he know this? Was it all intuitive? Was he aware of the joy only after the visitor pointed it out? When do artists take charge and shape the ideas that will become the true beauty of their paintings? Or do they?

I am in a very dark place now. The bleeding that hospitalized me two weeks ago could reoccur any time. The doctors are working on that and have planned a series of surgical procedures for me, the first being tomorrow. That by itself is scary enough, yet more terrifying for me is their initial diagnosis for the cause of the bleeding. It's tentative, they say; more tests are needed they say; and yet, if their first call about why I lost the blood is right, then I am quite ill.

Despite my fear, I find myself these recent days drawn to subjects of joy. My own vase with flowers above, with its simple shapes and flat colors, looks to me like the laughter of a child. From my own playful impulse I begin to understand why Matisse created such a bright painting during his darkest hour. The reality of his life was unimportant, only his yearnings for it. A true painter paints not facts, but dreams; not truth, but hope.

How To Start

2009-08-31T11:58:00.002-04:00

My sisters, Mary and Nancy, were down from Chicago to help me celebrate my 63^rd birthday in Athens, Ohio. We’d planned a dinner cruise on an Ohio River sternwheeler, a visit to an art quilt exhibit in town here, and a trip to a nearby wilderness zoo where the animals run free and the visitors are in cages.

At about 2 a.m. Saturday morning I began vomiting massive amounts of blood and wound up in an intensive care unit. I didn’t fully grasp at first how much they were struggling to keep me alive. To me it was a blur of beepers and frenzied people out there, remote from me. The second day in the ICU was when I comprehended: I'd lost half my blood. I could die.

I was in the hospital a week after that and coped with the terror by thinking about painting. At home now, Mary remains here taking care of me. And I’m still thinking about painting.

My dream is, when I retire at 65, to paint again, a hobby I haven’t pursued seriously since my 20s. Earlier at age 60 some instinct prompted, "Why wait? Start painting now." I did, and somehow despite the demands of work, life, people, dogs, gardens and the cruel innards of automobiles, I have done about twenty paintings. But I’ve not yet become a painter.

Now during recovery this is what I will do. Not just paint, but become a painter. This weekly blog is to be a journey of becoming. So, how to begin? That’s the easiest question I’ll face in this journey. Begin anything important by cleaning out the refrigerator.

I did. Mary helped me.