For years I have told people that someday, I would like to try painting pictures.
To sit by rivers and woods for hours on end, capturing idyllic scenes on canvas, would be such a thrill for me, I’ve said. It would be great therapy. A way to release tension and worry and put myself back in touch with the beauty of the natural world, to achieve a “oneness” with my fellow living beings, as artists like to say. I had lots of “twoness” and “threeness” in my life, but never enough “oneness.”
But it is a sad fact of living that there are more dreams dreamed than dreams realized and so it seemed to be with me. If I had actually sat down and painted as much as I talked about sitting down and painting, my works would have filled a gallery or two. Especially if I painted as well as I was sure my natural talent would allow me to.
“Someday, I’m going to do it,” I said. And I meant it.
This past Christmas, my “someday” finally came. One of my gifts was a set of oil paints and canvasses. Finally, these lonely voices of joy and despair, trapped for so long within the jailcells of this prisoner’s heart, were about to burst into colourful form and shape, where they could be viewed by others, their essential naked vitality, breathed in – and out again.
My soul was locked up behind a wall of inhibition and this painting kit was like a set of keys to set me free. (There’s nothing like getting set free to really make a day.)
But, alas, inspiration took its time to show up. The art kit sat on my desk at home until one recent Thursday night. At 9:45 p.m., I set everything up on my kitchen table. I got out my brushes, opened up my paints, put the canvas before me and started painting.
At 11 p.m., it was done. There in front of me, in glistening greens, reds and yellows, lay a colourful first exposé of 39 years of frustrated creativity. And it was done. In one hour and 15 minutes.
“There’s nothing to this,” I thought.
Across the bottom of the canvas stretched a strip of bright, perfectly green, green. That was grass. Above it, was a wider strip of bright, perfectly red, red. That was a fence. On the fence sat the perfectly white outline of an animal. A cat, to be precise. And above it, in a perfectly jet black sky, was a big, round, perfectly yellow moon.
I toyed briefly with the idea of starting a business: “Jim’s Speedy Masterpieces. Works of Art While U Wait.” But the idea vanished when I realized that, looking at my creation, I felt no “oneness” with anything. No “union with the universe.” No “stirring of my soul.” Though I did sense a stirring in my nostrils from the cleaner I used on my brushes.
So, Cat On A Fence Looking At The Moon seemed to have pretty well done it for my artistic aspirations. That was, of course, until I read this week that the National Art Gallery in Ottawa paid $1.8 million for an American artist’s painting, called Voice of Fire, a big red stripe bordered by two big blue stripes.
Now, I’m already planning Bird In A Tree Looking At The Moon, Cow In A Field Looking At The Moon and Coyote On A Hilltop Looking At The Moon. When the National Art Gallery, gets a load of those, I’ll be achieving a “oneness” with a very, large bank account.
But before they’re painted, I’ve my book to finish.
Did I tell you about my book? “My Life: A True Story?”
I’ve always wanted to write it. And I will too.
First free Saturday afternoon that comes along.
©1990 Jim Hagarty
