Painting in Layers

I've been dabbling in paint. Literally.

I put too much paint on the disposable plate I use as a palette. I mix it messily with my brushes until they are goopy with the individual starting colors still visible. I have to scrape them off and try to mix in the paint better.

This is why I haven't bought any expensive paint. I buy the cheap stuff that ends up being frustrating to work with, and then I get discouraged.

I've painted crazy, unrealistic things in garish bright colors. For some reason painting an elephant in red and turquoise takes the pressure off. It doesn't have to be perfectly realistic -- because it's red and turquoise. Realism was never the goal.

I think that is why I have liked it better. It frees me from feeling as though I have to get things just so. I did one crazy landscape with insanely bright green background, purple and blue trees. I didn't like it at first. I still don't if I get too close to it. But from this vantage point on the couch, it looks pretty good.

Painting has taught me about layering. I sit at my table with my cheap paint, brushes, and canvas and a hair dryer cord stretching out across the room. Paint a layer. Hair dryer. Paint a shape. Dry. Block out shadows. Dry. Don't get impatient with the drying, or you start to muddy up your brushes and lose your colors. What color should a black shadow be when I don't want to use black? I stop and take pictures along the way so that I can see the progression. It helps me see where I go wrong too. I can wipe off some paint if I haven't already dried it.

I feel like there is some deep life lesson there. Infer what you will.

I'm looking for what to try to paint next. It's a nerve-wracking moment to begin. Like I said, I was so frustrated with my paint the last time I am almost afraid to tackle something I like for fear of not doing it justice. My background got a bit muddy on my last. Paint quality is obviously poor and doesn't have nice even coverage, and is far too matte. Even so, my giant purple hare against a copper sun is kind of wild and cool. I thought about Watership Down when I painted it. The rabbits' mythology imagines the sun as a god they call Frith. I love the face against the sun. the body could use work. It's a bit off kilter.

I guess that is my fate, to have a bunch of slightly off paintings all over my apartment until I get better at it.

Walking home

I miss walking through the park.

These days, I drive. I drive everywhere. I live off another busy road, but this time with no walkable metro station. At least my window looks out onto a courtyard with a big tree and I can forget when I am home that I live off of a busy street. I have planted all sorts of things on the patio. This morning I ate two small strawberries that I grew myself. But the driving... 

The week I interviewed for this job, actually the DAY I interviewed for this job, I was hit in the parking lot by a FedEx truck that backed straight into me. It totaled by 2004 Honda Civic that was 56k miles young. I turned around and bought the 2015 model shortly thereafter. I spend an awful lot of time inside that car. 

Traffic in the DMV (DC-Maryland-Virginia, for the uninitiated) is terrible. Fortunately, I get to avoid rush hour much of the time because I end up going to recruiting lunches all over the region. I work from home, go to lunch, go to coffee, come home, relax a bit, do more work later. So for all the time I spend in the car, it's really not so bad. 

But, the park. Who would have thought I would miss that park?

The walk to the metro in the morning was peaceful most days. Blazing hot or bitter cold, the only time I didn't like it was after a certain time of night when the silhouettes of trees became menacing and I imagined who might be standing concealed there. Last May, a man was killed. That is why I moved away.

But it's where I saw the fox. Walking to work one morning, a fox, looking as though it were grinning at me. I could have forgotten it is a wild thing. I saw it again, years later, crossing the field in the dark carrying something in its mouth. Of course I don't know it was the same fox, but I like to imagine it was. 

A year after my mom died, one early evening I was walking in the twilight, still enjoying the walk. The air was warm until the wind blew cool, and bats filled the sky. My mother loved bats. She used to wait out in the backyard for them to come out at night. She wrote a story about them and submitted it somewhere. She was proud of it. I remember walking through that park and a smile breaking across my face. The bats careened over my head with their strange erratic flight patterns, making their strange whistling sounds. I slowed down. I stopped. I stood. Looking up and smiling, I closed my eyes and let the warm air hold me for a moment. 

The field is where I found four-leaf clovers. I found them fairly often. Once several in one week. Once after dreaming the most vivid dream about my grandmother. Of course, my mother reminded me that four-leaf clovers are just genetic mutations and, therefore, likely to be repeated in the same population. But I still felt a leap of joy in my heart when I looked down and found another one. 

I wasn't made to be in a place with so much concrete, barreling through the day covering the miles and smelling exhaust. I need a walk through the park.