Thank(mas): Painting

(if you wanna know what's going one, click here.)

It never hurts that I can make a mess:
paint on so many clothes, my cell phone etc

When I was in middle school (or rather middle school aged, because I was a homeschool kid) my aunt and uncle moved into the area. My uncle is an artist by profession, so mom thought it'd be a good idea if we went to his classes. He let us come for free, because he's a great uncle, and started us on colored pencil, like he does every new art student.

I really enjoyed the medium of color pencil, but when he watched what I tried to do with it, my uncle would always tell me that I'd love painting even more. I thought that that was probably a true statement but I didn't know how true it would be.

I don't remember when I decided to stop making excuses and just go get a canvas from Walmart. I think it was late high school. The result was a sunset painting. I loved blending the colors together to make the streaks in the sky. So I kept going. I tried an abstract piece on music, and then I tried one based off of a song, Cinematic by Cool Hand Luke.

One of my favorite walls, my people paintings:
some in progress

I kept going for about a year then let it go because, my paintings were starting to not turn out the way I wanted them. I picked it back up as I went into college. I found that pushing the paint around the canvas was almost healing for me in the midst of work, school, and other obligations. Now, painting is almost a necessity.

If I go too long without picking up a brush I will begin to do things like, treat water spilled on the table as canvas, brushing it with my finger into shapes and I will doodle my ideas on almost anything, receipts, handouts, time sheets, my arm.

And to add to my joy, I am liking what I paint. I'm not sure if my skill has improved or just my attitude. I know what I like to paint now, I know what to expect from my style. I think one of the biggest wounds we can do ourselves as artists is to compare our work to someone else's, or at least that has been damaging to me. Freezing me so I don't want to do anything myself until I can make it look like someone else's. But that's not the art I want to do.

I want to be an artist that is purely self expressional, to the point that, as cliche as it sounds, I put myself into the paintings. I paint on them, layer after layer, until I see a reflection on the canvas, of what was in my mind. When my mind and the canvas match, it is a moment of complete joy. I actually laughed out loud tonight when I found the look that I wanted for christmas lights in a tree. I was so excited.

I get so excited about my paintings, not because I think that they are the most impressive, or because I think they are even the best that I could do. I get so excited because I have finally learned to communicate between my head and my hand successfully and an idea that may be half-baked in my head comes to fruition as a five course meal (compared to my self-expectation).


I don't need my paintings to be realistic, or full of immaculate detail. I am in fact usually fairly minimalistic in scope. Trying to give the idea of something, rather than tiny details. If I start to be concerned with things like where my painting is in comparison to my uncle, all the joy gets sucked away. The good news is, my uncle is FANTASTIC, about finding genuine things to appreciate in my paintings and congratulating me not as much on the actual work, but when he sees me challenge myself.


As much as I love the laugh out loud moments of a finished painting, I think my favorite part of painting is not always the finished work, but rather the dance between the blank canvas and the finished work.

Once, in an art class (or likely more than once), I heard my uncle tell other students to stop over-thinking things like lace, or leaves on a tree and just let your brush dance around the canvas. I have taken that to heart and applied to far more than lace and trees. I love turning off the part of my head that over-thinks things, and just letting the brush dance around the canvas. Mixing colors and making shapes. Those are my favorite paintings when I get done.

I will never be the painter that my uncle is. He is fantastic and incredibly detailed. Nor will I ever say, "I will never be as good as my uncle", and I am 100% positive he would never let me say it, because it was my uncle who emphasized to me over and over again, that there really is no wrong way to paint, that your art is your art. There are no over-arching rules. Sure there are rules of how to achieve certain effects, but you, as an artist, make the decision if you want to go those routes or not.

I don't have to be "as good" as anyone else, except myself. I challenge myself, and laugh like a kindergartener every time myself meets the challenge and wins. And when I don't win, I just put some more paint on the canvas and let the brush keep dancing and appreciate all the gifts of the expression, no matter the result.

(see next post here)