In my previous post (the last of my first decade of writing), I referred to the Goddess painting a new painting in our world, and here I am in the first post in a new decade, writing about painting again. Just at the moment when I have been finding homes for old art supplies, weeding out my old paintings and those of my grandmother, I think I have finally accepted that (in this lifetime) I was not meant to be a famous painter. It hung over my head for years that "if only I had a big studio", I could do the work I want to do, but, no, of course, it works the other way around. You have to be compelled from within to paint, paint, paint, and then you must find the right studio. From early in my time at Parsons in the 1980's, I knew two things. I was only studying art because there was no chance (at that time) that women would ever get to sing English church music at the highest levels, and I had to express beauty somehow. And two, that I didn't have the same passion for art as I did for English church music. I dutifully fulfilled my homework assignments with ease and skill. Art flowed out of me -- I had a teacher who was convinced that I had been one of the great masters in an earlier lifetime (Add that to my list!) And yet...it was almost too easy. I didn't long to paint, I didn't need to paint. It wasn't fulfilling, or compelling as a goal for this lifetime. Thus no studio, thus at 69 the giving away of old easels and canvases. My artistic outlet at the moment is tiny hand-drawn postcards, and that is enough.
So, in the midst of this frothy eddy of old expectations and belongings and current realities, what do I discover on TV? A series that is hardly new -- UK "Portrait Artist of the Year". Somehow, though, I never saw it, either over there or over here. And last night and early this morning, I binge-watched big time, riveted. Just riveted. I had to really become clear with myself -- do I miss painting? No, absolutely not. And I recognize that I never really gained much skill in portraiture -- the likenesses these artists achieved were sometimes staggering. But I knew that world inside and out. I loved thinking, what approach would I take? What composition would work best? What color palette would I use? How did they do that? I was pretty good at picking each episode's three finalists, but in the end I was surprised by the season winner, and yet pleasantly so.
And last but not least, in true topsy-turvy Liz style, I knew what was drawing me in. I want to have a brilliant portrait done OF ME. I want to have three or six or eight artists arrayed in front of me, painting different facets of me, seeing me, perhaps revealing me to the world. I don't want to paint, I want to be painted. I want to be seen in that way! That certainly is a new painting, isn't it? I mean, I've reached this turning point before, but not quite so emphatically. And I don't know what it means spiritually or metaphorically, but maybe I will by tomorrow.
