Wisdom from the Trenches

For as long as I can remember, art has been a central part of my life. It all began with my gorgeous grey-haired grandma (or GGG, as I affectionately call her), who sang opera while dusting family furniture as a child, took a chemistry class in college during WWII to learn how to create beauty supplies and makeup, learned the delicate art of making porcelain dolls after becoming a grandma, and painted her way through her senior years. She is 100 years old now and only recently stopped driving herself to and from her Plein Air painting classes on Thursday mornings. She was the first woman I watched take everyday items and turn them into something exciting and beautiful. With her life and through her art, she showed me that life is about perspective and that changing your vantage point or rearranging something undesirable could dramatically increase the beauty and joy in your life.

Art makes our life more vibrant, more beautiful, and happier. GGG is a natural artist, creative to the core. She has a craft room that holds her sewing machine, paints, and knick knacks used when inspiration kicks into high gear. The walls of her house are peppered with paintings. Sitting in her home as a guest throughout the years, I have learned to slow down, observe all that is around me, and appreciate the finer points in life. Propped up against the coffee table, directly across from her favorite chair, is always her most recent painting from her time spent with her Plein Air group outdoors. For years, she has rocked and eyed each new painting while drinking her tea. This one needs a pear. That one might look better with some more greenery. She spent time looking over each one to see if improvements could be made…and then adjusted the painting to her satisfaction.

One particular painting she didn’t like at all. I remember the comments she made about that painting like the conversation occurred only yesterday because I took that painting home and framed it. The very thing she did not like about her painting was the exact reason I loved it: She had painted a dead and fallen tree next to a live tree that was shooting up toward the sky. She wanted to paint over the dead tree, because she thought it looked ugly and garish. But the painting reminded me of a memory I had from a trip I took to hike Half Dome in Yosemite National Park during a difficult time in my marriage. I was in despair over the condition of my life as I strolled along the Yosemite Valley floor one morning, when I looked out over the stream and saw a dead tree that had fallen over and a live tree growing directly out of it’s decaying stump – and I felt hope well up inside me. Because sometimes, things must die in our lives so that new growth can occur. My marriage did experience a rebirth afterward, so when I looked at that painting and felt just as I had when I was standing on that bridge, I asked if I could buy it. For GGG, that painting was disappointing and so she offered it to me for free. For me, that painting is a constant reminder of the hope I felt during a dark time in my life, and so, that painting is invaluable. As I left her house with the painting tucked under my arm that day, she remarked, “This goes to show that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.”

For several years in my adult life, I gave up creative pursuits. BIG MISTAKE! It is shocking to me how quickly I took on the perspective that I wasn’t a creative person during that time. I grew up crafting and sewing, knitting and beading, dreaming and writing, recording and singing, acting and imagining. During that break from creativity, I began to believe that I wasn’t creative or that I certainly wasn’t any good at art. I stopped coloring. I stopped crafting. I stopped sewing. I stopped scrapbooking. I stopped creating…and I became obsessed with producing. These are two very different things. One is original…the other is reproduction. One is enjoyable….the other is laborious. One is freeing…the other burdens. Joy was sucked from my life and I struggled immensely with severe depression and crippling anxiety. When I remembered my youth, I wanted so badly to create something – anything – once more, but my mind remained convinced that I wasn’t any good as an artist. True, my work wasn’t going to be framed and hang on an art gallery’s walls…but is fame always the goal of creating? No. The simple act of purchasing a coloring book and colored pencils opened the door to art once again and I realized that creating is not a competition to see who can be better. Art is about making my ordinary life extraordinary.

To say that art of any kind is impractical indicates a massive misunderstanding of the purpose behind creating. As a Christian, I consider being creative an extremely important aspect of God’s character – and one I would like to exercise in my own life, as I am able. Art transforms a drab everyday existence into a bright and colorful life worth living. Art communicates and processes emotion, often without words. Art recycles common, discarded, or unwanted items and breathes new life into them because art is about second chances. Art captures our attention and, if we are lucky, transports us to another dimension, where our senses, emotions, and the very core of our being live an integrated life. Art teaches us about real living.

In my grandma’s home and my childhood home, I was encouraged to imagine, pretend, and create. I learned to rework problems when I encountered issues because an item actively rejected the type of glue I was using on it or if I simply could not get watercolor paint to stay in the area I wanted it on the paper. I learned to change my perspective if I could not control the outcome, to roll with the punches and go a different direction if the way I originally imagined wasn’t possible. I learned resilience. I learned flexibility. I learned that mistakes were acceptable. I learned that taking breaks when frustrated was wise and usually cleared your head enough to see around an issue. I learned that just giving up was not an option. Perhaps the glue I was using couldn’t hold two items together properly in any given day, but the life lessons I learned through art and crafting at grandma’s house are permanently written on my heart. And the art I was given space to create on my own, without criticism or judgment, has instilled in me a love for creating beauty that elevates my life from drab to dazzling every, single day.