October 21, 2014 – Firsts, beginnings, starting out

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The first “Life in Full Color” retreat was just this past weekend. I’m still so filled with it that I’m not sure all there is to share of it. I’m still like a fish in the ocean – not conscious of the fact that there’s anything besides water to live in. Eight of us gathered at Vinegrove, a private vineyard in the west part of Healdsburg. It is just what I imagine as “the wine country” – acres of vines, a huge persimmon tree – full of orange fruit, chickens, a lovely flower garden – (there were still roses!) with fun bright-colored furniture and gravel paths. Plus a freshly and beautifully remodeled barn-loft looking out onto it all, which was our studio for the weekend. All this wrapped in only the sound of the birds and a very occasional airplane.

There were seven participants-painters-artists, two of which are regular painters in our weekly groups, two had had taken a Saturday class with me – relatively new painters, but have painted some. And three who had never before taken watercolor brush to paper. I watched them swish the brush in color and take away the whiteness of the paper. It’s a thrilling experience – to make your mark, to transform something in this way. It’s a curious thing for me – what is it in us that has us want, desire, even long to do this? It’s not watercolor, or even painting, for everyone, but it seems that we have factory-installed an impetus to effect change on our world – especially to create something where there wasn’t before.

When I’m out showing my work I often hear people say that they could never do what I do because they have no talent. I have written about talent a bit in the web-page about my weekly groups, but after watching people see their first work this weekend, with varying combinations of delight and judgment, I wanted to explore this idea of talent further. I looked it up online and discovered some interesting meanings. The original ancient Greek meaning was “a weight, especially of gold, or a unit of money.” Hmmm… a way to parcel out value. Much later, in Old French it meant “will, inclination or desire.” Double hmmm.

We do value talent like gold. The meaning of the word now is a “marked natural ability or skill.” It’s as if we are either blessed with it from birth or not. The thing for me is how do we know we have talent, if we’ve never even tried something? What do you think this painting here would say about the innate talent of the artist who painted it?

I painted it about 20 years ago. If I judged my “talent” upon this piece, I might be still slogging myself to the city working in Information Architecture in corporate IT! But there was and is something in me – in us that has us keep at it. I kept painting and evolving as a painter – gaining skills and confidence and coming upon this thing I call “Life in Full Color” that I express with my artwork.

There are skills to be gained, there is a craft to what we do. There’s so much to learn in working with the paint, paper and especially water. Then there is color – and composition. The stuff of art-making. Beginning work is always beginning work and worth celebrating, like a child’s first steps. But it’s never the work of an experienced hand and eye. The more we do it, the more refined our capacity becomes to work with the materials and our vision – what we want to “say” with what we create – clarifies.

It’s more sticking with it than it is anything God-given. And what keeps us doing that comes back to the Old French meaning of “talent.” (Being a huge Francophile, I love that it was Old French!) It’s the desire, the will, and the inclination to paint! It also is linked to what we love. I LOVE watercolor. I love how it moves, I love the purity of paper and color/pigment. I have no choice, it has me. And I love what I paint – flowers, fruit, colorful, artful food, sweet doggy faces. We don’t choose what we love, it chooses us. I cannot will myself to respond to slate grey the way I do magenta-pink!

Here’s what I have come to believe – those of us who make art have been blessed not by “marked natural abilities or skills” so much as we have hearts filled with such desire to make art and such love for color and shape, or for our subjects that we stick to it. It follows that what it is we are here to say comes into form. If this love and desire is in you, follow it! If there’s something stopping you, I’m here to give you permission. Make your mark!