Beginnings. These are not the first paintings I ever attempted, but they are close. Recently, my father died in a tiny, cigarette-stained home in Oklahoma to which the demons had chased him, years ago. My mom died over ten years previously. The house had a few of my paintings in it that spanned the years. I gave away the newer, better ones to people who had helped dad, but I saved these. The first one was painted in 1981. I was sixteen and allowed to bring some acrylic paint home from art class. My mother wanted a landscape painting to put on her wall and all of my paintings had been too weird for her tastes. It is entirely from my imagination because I misunderstood my teacher and thought that all paintings HAD to be from one’s imagination. I didn’t overcome this idea until about the year 2000, when painting some cups from life gave me anxiety, like I was doing something very wrong. The second was a self portrait I made in my first apartment so, probably 1988. I was about 24 or 25. The thing I remember most about painting it was, again, it had to be unrealistic. Distorted. I used a mirror. It’s also notable that my eyes were still green, with one having a brown spot that I called my “dirt clod.” My eyes are completely brown now from glaucoma medication. Yeah, that can happen and it’s weird! The third painting was done in 1991, when my oldest was an infant. I also painted a dragon, with a weird moon and a pink ribbon. They were just things to look at in her room, and practice for me.
Thing is, these paintings also represent things I learned from the process of painting. It made me remember that before that awful landscape, I had already completed two versions of a painting full of legs, with a giant eyeball. I had painted a fox-like thing drooling over a city. I had painted a bad picture of my profile in a variety of muddy colors that has not survived. I had, at sixteen, completed several bad paintings, and I kept on doing it. I think that at the time I thought that was pretty typical. I thought everyone made art and they did it way better so I developed in the dark, without much notice, except from mom and dad.
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