Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Releasing My Inner Hans Hofmann

One of these days I'm going to paint. I even have a set of acrylics, brushes, palette and my first canvas. I have visions in my head of colorful abstracts. Why abstracts? Because I can't draw worth a damn. Why even attempt to create a realistic rendition of something when I know it'll come out looking like a child's finger painting?

I don't quite know how I'll transfer the images in my head onto the canvas. My last art lessons were in 8th grade. I am fairly certain I did not make an A in that class. It wasn't as bad as my band class. The band director, extremely frustrated with my eager yet awful fumblings on the little red plastic recorder, screeched at me to stop! stop! stop! before publicly humiliating me by announcing that "You! Will! Never! Be! In! My! Band!" and suggesting I go join the choir. Unfortunately for me, I have the type of singing voice that no one wants to hear. Fortunately for me, my band director did not return the next day to school, or the next, or the next. He'd had a nervous breakdown and never came back. I like to think it wasn't entirely my lack of talent that sent him over the edge.

Back to painting. I have the desire, the tools and the images swirling around my brain. Now I have to take the plunge and actually put brush to canvas and see what happens. At worst it will be a very creative and colorful mess. Kind of like me.

2 comments:

El Jefe said...

I can't wait to see what comes out - I still have my first oil painting, "Rocket at Liftoff" - or was it "Explosion"? I can't remember... but then, I was six, so either one works, depending on which way you orient the frame; I learned about "happy accidents" long before I knew who Bob Ross was :) Good luck!

Kay said...

I used to watch Bob Ross! At least I think so...was he the guy on PBS who used to say stuff like "this happy flower" when he talked about what he was painting?

Painting in oil at age 6...your mother was brave!