and begin with an endearing simplicity. They might make startling leaps forward, only to clumsily fall back on their bottoms, but you brush them off and set them on their feet again. Soon they move into an awkward phase, an embarrassing phase, a phase during which the camera is no friend and you wonder "What is the point?" But you push through. You listen to Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel singing words of encouragement, "Don't give up..." And one morning, it gets better. And not long after that, something clicks and it all seems to come together.
I went back to the studio eager to see what mom had done to "save" our painting. And while she had definitely pulled it through it's darkest hour, it still had a way to go. It needed simplifying...or something. It still needed work.
Etiquette. Family politics. Respect. Pride. Humility. Empathy. Humor.
My mother had said she was feeling good about the painting. In the past, I've never really held back with my opinions of her work. I'm usually not callous, but I'm often very candid. It's the reason my mother values my opinion. I know her work. I am familiar with her process. I know what she is capable of creating and I know that she occasionally will hit a point with a painting where she'll give up and call it good...when it's not. I try not to let her get away with that. Honestly, if I said nothing, eventually she would admit it herself, but I try to save her the time.
This is our painting however, and somehow that made it harder, rather than easier, to voice my opinion. I didn't want her to think I didn't like part of the painting simply because it wasn't how I would do it, but rather, because I simply didn't think it worked. The face was still wrong, better, but not yet right. Rather than taking back over, I sketched out an idea that took where she had gone just a little further. Mom liked it, changed the colors, and put the painting back on track. I tidied up the hair and feet, slimmed some lines on the fingers, and we were both happy again.
We were both happy again, yes. We both liked it. We liked the composition. We were both pleased with the lines, with the colors, with the flow. But...
...there was still something...missing. There was just the slightest bit of..."and then?"
Mom often carries around a notebook into which she copies down quotes that she likes. Things she reads, or hears someone say. It's good, writing it down, because my mom deals with both dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, so even if she focused long enough to memorize something someone said, something could potentially get lost while recalling the quote in order to offer someone her advice. My mother also has a lot of advice to offer. Actually this is an unfortunate family trait. We all suffer from Advice Tourette's. Should you ever relay some quandary you might be in to my mother, me, or any of my siblings, we will undoubtedly offer you our unsolicited advice. We all have our own advice styles, compassionate, enthusiastic, mystic, mad as hell, fatherly, teacherly, preacherly, we mix it up sometimes to keep it fresh...but I stray, back to the point...
...now the painting was saying something. Mostly it was quoting Seneca. Then just a touch...
...and a couple of brushes...
...and this is my mother.
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