Patience
I tend to write on the fly, so if this starts out a little low, just know that I’m working it out as I go. I hope to land on the truth.
Patience is now a discipline where it was once just a natural part of wanting everything to be okay and everyone to get along.
It’s just that a lot is going on that I feel I have no control over.
Painting can help with that if I can get to the headspace where it is okay to paint, where the thoughts about bills and life failures and time running out do not stifle the process.
But they do. More and more, I wonder why I paint when life feels so heavy with many parts out of line. I have said before that painting, for me, is like prayer in that it is very hard to do, but some benefits are difficult to quantify or explain.
I wish I didn’t come to this place so often. I wish that I had somehow matured to the point where I don’t feel like a lost 15-year-old sitting in a field. I’m just not that good at life.
However -
I think that this year may not be about painting at all, and that’s where I’m getting snagged. I want to get better and produce and participate, but this year may be about growing in ways others cannot see. This is actually very hard work. Perhaps it is what the clay feels while in the kiln.
It would be different if I didn’t believe in God, specifically in the Resurrection.
If it were just me, my molecules, and I, there would be no reason to have hope, for what does hope have to do with chemical reactions and physics? Yet it is hope that I lay down to sleep with. My first deep breath when I wake is hope. Hope is the reason for trying to be a good employee, for spending money on healthcare, for holidays, for losing time while staring out of windows, for feelings of loss, for being drawn outside at dusk, for entering competitions, and for conversations. Hope is the reason for almost everything.
We struggle in hope. We fail in hope. We mourn in hope. We toil alone in hope.
When the waters have risen to our throats, it is with fear and hope —hard hope— that we will try harder, call out, and eventually, just surrender. Even when we get a sense that we are smaller than a bug on the back of an ant on the surface of the wide, wide world, something in us stirs our hearts to purpose, beauty, excellence, tenderness, love, and hope.
As this is a space about painting, I will share some painting ideas and how they relate to patience. Said another way, are there things about the reference that call me to listen?
Here are a few references and why I am considering them for future efforts.
The image above is from the Bighorn Mountains and shows the forest after a major fire. I had not seen anything like that before, and the black/grey trees were mesmerizing. They had a sheen to them. The shadow from the ridge intensified the density of the black. I stood there beside the road, filled with silence, completely lost in the scene.
The forest will recover. It will be lush one day, but not yet.
Patience.
So, how to make a picture that gets to this idea? I don’t know, but I imagine a squareish proportion filled mostly with black and grey and with the light-colored stone against the darkness. I would depend on the understanding of forest fires (or controlled burning) to do some of the lifting for me. We know that nature returns with green vigor after a fire, so my task would be to be crystal clear that a fire has happened and not get lazy with the details. If there was a hope component, it would come from the viewer’s understanding of fires and from, perhaps, a bit of living plant life as seen at the bottom in the rocks.
I see this as a large picture. If you can zoom in on the mass of trees to the left of the stone, fill the frame. See what I mean? There is something there that feels like it is looking back, asking, waiting.
The image above (from Wyoming) is of a weather system that was bringing colder temperatures and a bit of snow, if I remember correctly. A cloud was close to the ground and obscuring the sun. I have other references that have the sun off to the right and even more obscured, but I like central placements because there is no confusion as to what I am presenting and why (it isn’t so much about design as about the idea). The sun over a high point of these interesting hills seems good to me, even if it isn’t original. (What is original?) Central placements also read to me as more symbolic for some reason. I don’t mind that if my reason for painting the picture is an idea (like “patience”) and not a lovely light or interesting scene. See what I mean?
Cold weather moving in. Approaching discomfort. Obscured sun. These things ask us what we will do. Will we prepare to face it or adapt, or do we want to leave? This scene feels like a challenge we can accept or reject or like an oracle speaking, and our choice depends on what we believe is on the other side of the storm. Is it worth it? Can we hold on until the sun returns? Fortitude or comfort?
I feel a squareish picture might be good, but an elongated proportion may also serve well. Right now, I have a small square practice effort of this that is waiting for me to return. We shall see.
I posted the 8×16 practice of this scene recently on Instagram. The cottonwood (which may still put out leaves…) reminds me that some things happen in due time. The clouds covering the mountain tops and the distance between the two speak of patience in a different way, speak of difference, and connections that defy space and time.
These last two images are of the same place near home. It seems that obfuscation and patience seem to go together (in my mind). We cannot always see what we want to see, or see the way ahead, but we trust that there is something worth waiting for. Imagine being in the house that is tucked into the trees in these photos. From the house, you could not see the light overhead. From the house, you could not see the road. We think we are doing ok until something happens and we can no longer see, until the familiar paths are strangely dim.
How to say that with a painting? It isn’t enough to copy the reference, but how to arrange these elements to be clear on what I’m saying?
Is it even important to do so?
Is it enough to work through these things without paint, shapes, colors, and tones?
Patience.
A first cousin had a heart attack.
The bills keep going up.
My parents just lost their dog.
Morgan Irons just lost her dog.
Our dog is old and sick.
Our family members are ailing.
We cannot trust information anymore.
Our society is materialistic, shallow, and just about lost.
I am back in the Bighorns by the side of the road,
looking into the endless mass of greyblack char,
trying to hear the wind through the trees,
wondering what good it is to care so much,
but feel myself caring harder.
A hard, green hope.
It will be lush.
Patience.
