it wasn't great by any means, but it was perfect

            A couple of years ago, I took a painting class at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.  I had always enjoyed making art, but got away from my creative side in high school while I focused on math and science classes.  I liked getting absorbed in complex problems to which I could find a definite solution.  Math and science just made sense to me.  If I followed the rules, I was rewarded by an answer that made perfect sense.

            After a couple years in college, I wandered into an art supply store on South Craig Street.  I didn’t really have anything in mind; I just felt the need to create something from within myself.  I bought a canvas, a couple brushes, and a few tubes of paint.  In my shared apartment, I spread newspaper over the coffee table, put some water in a cup, and arranged my new supplies. 

            For two hours, I furiously brushed paint across the canvas.  I had nothing resembling practiced technique; I just let it all flow without judgment.  The resulting painting was something of a self-portrait, I suppose.  I never actually gave it that label until now.  It was a rough portrait of a woman with wild hair blowing around her face with a dark orange background.  Her eyes were mine, though.  And her slightly pained  expression—of confusion or loss of control—was mine when I painted it.  When I finished, I was pleased with the image.  It wasn’t great, by any means, but it was perfect.  It was the first time I really got a glimpse of what had been trapped inside since Hurricane Katrina—frustration, hopelessness, guilt, sadness, maybe even some anger.

            After graduation, I still had a lot of feelings I needed to access and the only way I could think to do so was through painting.  I had kept painting occasionally, picking up a brush every few months, but I never continuously experimented and practiced with the art form.  So, I thought a painting class would be a good way to add some technique and structure to my need for art.

            Everyone in my class was nice, but not overfriendly, and my teacher was very talented and kind.  However, I found it incredibly stressful to test different techniques in class each week with ten other students at easels on either side of my own.  I couldn’t help but peek at their progress and compare it to my own.  Usually, I concluded that mine looked much worse than theirs, and I judge and criticize until I just stopped and stared at the few strokes I had made while everyone else continued. 

            I worked better in my apartment, while my roommate was away or at least in another room.  I turned on soothing music, poured myself a glass of wine, and tried to follow the instructions for that week’s assignment.  One week the homework was to make a black-and-white still life—so I painted a cup I had borrowed from work.  Another week we had to coat the canvas with a layer of paint, wipe a bit off, and then shade in the clean parts.  I never got the hang of this technique.  Everything I did was ugly and lopsided, which was completely unacceptable to me.  Later, we made landscapes and the teacher declared that this was my calling.  I captured the sun shining through a forest of bare trees, the ground covered in snow.  I styled it off of a photograph I had taken the day my grandmother died the previous year. 

            Finally, we were told to create a self-portrait so I started painting my face in class.  I was going to have my hair blowing around with a bird flying out of it, completely free.  When I tried to continue it at home, I couldn’t even look at what was to become an image of my face without feeling anxious.  This was never going to work.  I stared into the small bathroom mirror, looking at myself from different angles and blocking bits of my face.  When I covered up the bottom half of my face, I knew that was the only way I could paint a self-portrait.

            My eyes stare straight forward, expressionless, with my hair hanging down on either side of my face.  Entangled in my hair are the roots of a small tree, its leaves just budding in the springtime.  I have been obsessed by that image—a tree in the springtime—for many years, now.  It’s even tattooed on my right side.  To me, it represents new life, hope, dreams, strength, stability…everything that I’ve been searching for since August 29, 2005.  I may not be a great painter, but it allows me to express emotions that I am unable to put into words.  That's what counts.