Watching the Artist

When I was in high school there was a girl in my art class that was a world above the rest of us amateurs. To watch her paint was to marvel and cry. She saw things none of us could see. She made things none of us could make. When she touched her canvas magic happened, a brackish world of beauty and pain revealed. I could watch her for hours, missing my other classes and failing to do my own work.

To watch an artist is to be transformed. Where there was once a small person in a closed closet, there becomes an opioid fisheye racing into the horizon of new. Novel things happen. Possibilities arise. Oppressive limits break down.

My current world contains multiple artists. Pintrest and Instagram throw me soft pitches, but the real hits come in my own home. My husband fiddles with his guitar as my son and their friends take turns tangling in the melody. My daughter quietly creates tiny beautiful paradigms of life out of clay or plants or ink and paper. My own back yard springs up dazzling displays of unimaginable splendor. And once I am filled to overflowing with their offerings, I begin to create on my own.

Unsplash photo cred: Sheelah Brennan