Art bits and shit
No, this post is not about the ‘ins and out’ of diapering my toddler, but I could write a pamphlet on “Functional Constipation in Young Children” after the amount of tests and money we’ve spent on her digestive system. This is my disclaimer: I say shit, a lot. I love Jesus, a real whole lot, but I say shit. I say other words too. It makes my mother livid, but I’m almost 39 years old, and this is me. If you’re reading this and thinking that maybe I’d be prim and proper, this may not be the blog for you.
We’ll get into feminism later, but this is an accurate depiction of my authentic self.
Art bits is exactly how I’d describe my relationship with creating recently. Bits and pieces of moments between making frozen pancakes, finding sippy cups, cleaning up geriatric dog piss, convincing my child that the ant on the floor won’t bite, limiting iPad time, failing at limiting iPad time, throwing children outside, bringing them back in for sunscreen applications (because their skin is whiter than Conan O’Brien’s), finding pacifiers that are supposed to stay in the “big girl” bed, thinking about putting the laundry away, throwing the laundry on the bed, and then shoving it all back in the basket before crawling into sleep.
What can really be created in a short bit? What do you do with your small children? I don’t paint late into the night. I’m happiest in the mornings, and I take a nap almost every day with my daughter. I find pretending you’re Bob Ross works well, I share my processes with both my children. They’re always in my craft room. My daughter has a lap tray and rocker chair set up with her paints, and my son can pull out his art drawer but is usually at my computer on Reading Eggs. Finlea just asked for “paint like Momma”, she was tired of her Dollar store set. She throws paint down with wild abandon. Her works are bold and rather lovely. I’m rejuvenated by her spirit.
Art doesn’t have to be completed at once. Art doesn’t have to be realistic, or even something you would show someone. I was listening to a podcast recently, and the artist said something like, “Flowers are the shape I try to attain. It’s just blobs of paint I splash together, in whatever color I love.” If you’re looking to start a creative painting practice, start with simple shapes. Hell, even color swatching is relaxing. I love watching videos and looking at photos of watercolor circles that melt into one another. This requires no thought. That’s the point. Get out of your head, escape, make something lovely, all while your child is hanging on your feet.
This idea of just painting circles was born out of a request from my best friend. She’s an Enneagram type 1, imagination should have rules.. right? She asked me to help her find a creative outlet. I suggested teaching her to use watercolors, it was met with instant nix. In a manner of 5 minutes, I had a full course brewing in my head. Teaching is in my soul. When I know something doesn’t have to be as complicated as folks make it, I want them to zoom out from the microscope they’re looking under. When I was teaching math to 6th graders, I saw myself in their eyes. One gal sat beside me with her head in her hands every day. I can still hear the distress in her voice. She was actively trying to understand. I have a way of calming students into refocusing their lens. I didn’t fix everything or even much for her, I don’t have a magic wand to erase years of self-doubt. I was that girl in the chair, but I never asked for help. I sat sinking, trying to decipher whatever words were coming out of my math teachers’ mouths. (It was Latin, they were speaking, and they wrote in Mandarin on the blackboard. No one will ever be able to convince me otherwise.) In a couple short weeks, we’ll be in my favorite place. I will take a nonpainter, and give her tools to find her art bits. (Hopefully, no “shit”, but there may be a full blog post in an emergency “potty break” for one of our children on the side of the road.)
Art, for me, is therapy. In the middle of nap times and waiting for the bus, I swirl paint on paper. When I’m not describing my process to one of my children, and I can hear my thoughts, I paint them out. Yesterday, there was an article in the local newspaper that mentioned me. It was lovely. When a friend shared it with me, I picked up my phone to call Mamaw. I wanted to see if she’d looked at it yet. In fact, I was surprised she didn’t call to tell me she had already cut it out. I can’t tell my mind that she’s not here anymore. We didn’t have time with her at the end. She fell. She broke her shoulder. She was in the hospital. She was in rehab. She couldn’t come home. We couldn’t see her. The last time I tried was Valentine’s Day. I stood outside the room at her rehab facility in the 8-degree weather, waiting for someone to come and open her blinds. No one came. When Papaw had been hospitalized, if I wasn’t sleeping I was finding a way to be in his hospital room. I even spent the night, 16 weeks pregnant. When he cut his face shaving I sat in the waiting room at the ER. I was taught to show up. They showed up for everything in my life. COVID restrictions kept me standing outside in 4 inches of snow, outside a window that never opened.
I’m an extremely optimistic person. I want to find joy in everything. Sometimes the glass is half full, sometimes the glass is half empty, but sometimes it’s just full of piss. A precious, wise friend was sharing something recently, and I stopped her midthought, ‘I must write that down’. She said, “People like a good calm story.” That phrase is like a key to unlocking a code. I’ve been on the course of ripping apart all that has caged women after reading, “Untamed”. I’ll pinpoint moments in my life when words, phrases, and memories have shaped the way I see myself, a woman. I dissect them so I can unlearn them. I’m here, a grown-ass woman, looking at all of the hoops I’ve forced myself through (because it was the ladylike thing to do), and I call bullshit.
