My wife's grandmother, Marilyn, was a painter. A good one. She loved to watch Bob Ross and paint beautiful scenes. You can see the joy she had for painting come through in her work. There was a room on the second floor of the Minnesota farm house she shared with her husband Ed that she used as her studio, full of paints, brushes, canvases, drawings and frames. I remember marvelling at it when I visited the family there in the mid 1990's. It was inspirational that, among all the everyday stuff that comprises farm life, Marilyn carved a space and time for her painting. I knew that if I wanted to paint, draw, sculpt, play music, I would have to create my own time and space as well. That idea imprinted itself in my mind and has gently nudged me ever since. Opportunity may not present itself unless you have a hand or mind to help create it. A lesson that didn't fully sink in until I had the privilege of helping to preserve one of her last paintings.
A few years back (perhaps closer to 7 or 8) Marilyn's daughter Cathy, my mother-in-law, asked me to help find a way to preserve a painting that went unfinished due to her passing from cancer. The image was completely drawn out in pencil on the canvas and several areas had already been painted in full color. Cathy asked if I could retrace the pencil lines in black paint so that they would be more permanent and more visible. I set out right away, and soon the painting was set aside to work on other projects. Four moves (one to another state) and several years later, I unpacked the painting and set it on my easel. It was time to finish it and I needed to create my time and space in order to see it through. It was a long journey, but I completed my tasks. I never forgot what Marilyn unknowingly taught me. I created my working space. I carved out my time to work and create. I made more permanent the lines Marilyn drew on that canvas. I brightened up the yellowing canvas by applying titanium white between those lines; what became our lines. Not in the sense of ownership, mind you as they were still her lines I was retracing, but in the sense of a shared experience: painting. She taught me (as with everyone she came in contact with) that life is indeed what you make it to be. Draw the lines out. Erase them if they don't please you, or darken them if they do. Paint in those areas to finish up the experience, then move on to a new and exciting one.
Thank you, Marilyn.
