Not Artistic
Feb. 2nd, 2011 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbheAll my life I have drawn, painted, coloured, sculpted. And all my life I have been told that I am "not the artistic one," that my little efforts of art were perfectly respectable for someone who was not artistic and I grew up believing -- this is complicated, because I am trying to articulate never-articulated assumptions I wouldn't have consciously believed had I been aware of them -- that my art was childish, that all children need art in their lives as part of their development and to aid developing an aesthetic sense, but that for me it was a child-thing which I had to leave behind when I reached adulthood and had tedious office jobs.
That's not quite accurate but it'll do.
I never tried to draw really well after primary school because by then I knew that I was Not Talented and so there was no point in trying. I did try, a bit, and I took Art for Junior Cert and for Leaving (though I dropped out long before exams, and was never as sure I would have passed Art as I was that I would pass my other subjects, what was left of them). Then I had a go, in a halfhearted kind of way, a few times, though never painting after one or two exercises from a book I got as part of the most amazing arty Christmas gift ever, and then I had children.
For children, I found I needed to have art in my life.
I can't separate children and art. They go together like mud puddles and wellies, thunder and lightning, flour and white handprints. Children use their painted tummies to make prints on paper, layer their paintings up over the top of each other until one sheet contains seventeen artworks and looks almost but not quite uniformly brown, paint their gross motor development (no, really! when they are painting circles they also walk in circles; when they are painting straight lines they are running back and forth; when they paint zig-zags - it's amazing and exciting). Children give their artwork and hoard it jealously, tear it up and stick it on the wall. They use the blank reverse of my favourite child-painting to draw a pattern for a poo-collecting-machine and then cut up the outlines, destroying a magnificent bicycle I had intended to frame.
So when I had children, I gave them art. We drew and painted and tore and glued. I bought Linnea good quality sketch paper and chalks, because the lousy quality of children's crayons enraged me, and we drew our way from Reading to Holyhead to Dublin to Galway to the Aran Islands, us and Donkey. Later I breastfed Emer while I drew a horse for Linnea, sitting opposite me; I drew it with my left hand and upside-down (right way up for her), but she said it passed muster.
I carry crayons and paper, or at least a pen or pencil and an old shop receipt. When I am stuck with children in a boring place, that's what happens. For Emer I painted the Faffint, a red elephant on a yellow background. Linnea's portrait of the newborn Emer hangs in the dining room, poster-paints on canvas.
But although I received the most amazing arty Christmas gift ever before Rob and I got married, it was actually intimidatingly good, and I was afraid of wasting such marvellous things by doing inferior work with them.
Eight or nine years later, Lucy gave me canvases for Christmas, and then after Christmas I was massively suicidal and decided I needed to start ACTING like I deserved nice things, and I started painting.
It turns out I am allowed to paint.
And now, having sold ten paintings, I am even allowed to practice drawing again.
The most amazing arty Christmas gift ever contained:
- Winsor & Newton water-based oil colours, 6 tubes.
- A Winsor & Newton watercolour box set, with palette.
- Many Pro-Arte oil brushes and some other brand of sables
- Willow charcoal
- Pencils
- Palette knife
- Canvas boards for oils
- three pads of top-quality watercolour paper, one block and two glued on only one edge
- tear-off paper palette
- six-well plastic palette for oils
- plastic palette for watercolours
- two books to teach oneself to paint with watercolours and oils
- probably some other stuff I've forgotten
That's not quite accurate but it'll do.
I never tried to draw really well after primary school because by then I knew that I was Not Talented and so there was no point in trying. I did try, a bit, and I took Art for Junior Cert and for Leaving (though I dropped out long before exams, and was never as sure I would have passed Art as I was that I would pass my other subjects, what was left of them). Then I had a go, in a halfhearted kind of way, a few times, though never painting after one or two exercises from a book I got as part of the most amazing arty Christmas gift ever, and then I had children.
For children, I found I needed to have art in my life.
I can't separate children and art. They go together like mud puddles and wellies, thunder and lightning, flour and white handprints. Children use their painted tummies to make prints on paper, layer their paintings up over the top of each other until one sheet contains seventeen artworks and looks almost but not quite uniformly brown, paint their gross motor development (no, really! when they are painting circles they also walk in circles; when they are painting straight lines they are running back and forth; when they paint zig-zags - it's amazing and exciting). Children give their artwork and hoard it jealously, tear it up and stick it on the wall. They use the blank reverse of my favourite child-painting to draw a pattern for a poo-collecting-machine and then cut up the outlines, destroying a magnificent bicycle I had intended to frame.
So when I had children, I gave them art. We drew and painted and tore and glued. I bought Linnea good quality sketch paper and chalks, because the lousy quality of children's crayons enraged me, and we drew our way from Reading to Holyhead to Dublin to Galway to the Aran Islands, us and Donkey. Later I breastfed Emer while I drew a horse for Linnea, sitting opposite me; I drew it with my left hand and upside-down (right way up for her), but she said it passed muster.
I carry crayons and paper, or at least a pen or pencil and an old shop receipt. When I am stuck with children in a boring place, that's what happens. For Emer I painted the Faffint, a red elephant on a yellow background. Linnea's portrait of the newborn Emer hangs in the dining room, poster-paints on canvas.
But although I received the most amazing arty Christmas gift ever before Rob and I got married, it was actually intimidatingly good, and I was afraid of wasting such marvellous things by doing inferior work with them.
Eight or nine years later, Lucy gave me canvases for Christmas, and then after Christmas I was massively suicidal and decided I needed to start ACTING like I deserved nice things, and I started painting.
It turns out I am allowed to paint.
And now, having sold ten paintings, I am even allowed to practice drawing again.
The most amazing arty Christmas gift ever contained:
- Winsor & Newton water-based oil colours, 6 tubes.
- A Winsor & Newton watercolour box set, with palette.
- Many Pro-Arte oil brushes and some other brand of sables
- Willow charcoal
- Pencils
- Palette knife
- Canvas boards for oils
- three pads of top-quality watercolour paper, one block and two glued on only one edge
- tear-off paper palette
- six-well plastic palette for oils
- plastic palette for watercolours
- two books to teach oneself to paint with watercolours and oils
- probably some other stuff I've forgotten
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-02 11:56 pm (UTC)Why do people make comments like this? Is it supposed to be consoling?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 12:44 am (UTC)The two who were The Special One and The Pretty Ones... yeah, it didn't do them much good.
I think being The Artistic One was ok, though obviously other simultaneous roles weren't.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 04:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 12:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 03:37 am (UTC)N.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-08 07:05 am (UTC)I was The Smart One. He was premature and The Special One -- physically small, and labelled "slow" by his teachers. It wasn't till he was nine years old that it was figured out that he's not stupid but had a specific learning disability. That must've been a fucking hard row to hoe.
(I was The Smart One and also The Responsible One and also The Girl. It's hard to tell which of those has done the most damage over the course of my life, but I have to say that combination was pretty bloody toxic.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 10:34 am (UTC)Is this one of those things that's based on being the tallest when you were eight or something, or are your sisters actually smaller than you? I think of you as distinctly petite!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-03 10:57 am (UTC)