Today’s phenomenal meal was breakfast at the Braeburn. I parked my aching butt at the counter next to a couple of salty old locals who were dressed like movie extras pretending to be a couple of salty old locals, and I ordered the dish the waitress recommended, which was probably just the most expensive thing and not the tastiest, but I didn’t care. When am I ever going to have eggs Benedict with curried oysters, wild mushrooms & bacon again? Never, if the gods favor me. (Actually, it was really very good, but my body took about an hour to decide whether oysters and bacon were my natural prey. Luckily, I am built like a trash-foraging animal, and just about anything you can slop on a garbage can lid is my natural prey.)
My third painting was better than the first two, if still a bit sloppy and problematic. You have to paint through a pile of shitty paintings to get to the good ones, there isn’t any other way around it. I learned so much from Elizabeth. She took my brush and dabbed at my painting, saying, turn the form with chroma instead of tone if it’s starting to look hard. Use bigger paint piles. Softer brushes. Really goop it on. Wipe it out with a pointy q-tip when you fuck it up. Don’t go dark to light, go darkest-darks and brightest-brights to keep them clean, then work the middle values to turn the form. Make the eyelid crease bloody. Err on the side of too much color, so long as the values are right.
I was so sad to see this last day draw to a close. As we washed our bushes and said our goodbyes, I went back to look at the samples Elizabeth had taped to the wall; past demos she had made for other classes - quick studies, ranging from outlines to finished work. I kept coming back to a partially-finished sketch of a girl with her face upturned, just a mark where her lips should be and one eye finished with such deft little brush strokes that it made my heart hurt.
I went out of my head and bought it.
It is my first real original art purchase, and it means so much to me, coming from this experience and this artist.
In the dark and the rain, I hugged my sloppy paintings to my chest, the little Zanzinger study carefully covered in plastic wrap, and as I was trotting along under my umbrella, I realized that it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Really. The last time I was this happy just being me - not having anything to do with love or kissing or babies - was when I was 16, skinny dipping with my friends in a freshwater pond in the rainforest. And when I was 11, sitting on my favorite cliffside rock on Black Mesa, watching the wild horses kick up dust as they ran. When I was 4, riding in my toddler bicycle seat behind my mother, smelling the rainy Indiana summer and feeling like I was flying.
One last night by the fire with my knitting and my book, then back to life as usual.
This is what I want to do.
I’m having a lot of feelings tonight, folks.
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