Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [14]
“Meaning?”
“It’s the journey that matters.”
5
One of the great things about growing up in the sticks was the ignorance. Country people aren’t dumb and certainly not stupid. We pride ourselves on common sense and more than one of us have aced the SAT, but there are certain things we know very little about and, admittedly, some of that comes from a prideful unwillingness to either ask a few questions or want to know. Don’t worry, it’s not a regional disease. I’ve found it exists in New York, too. They just call it by another name.
In my education, art was one of those things. For most of my friends, art was a class you took or something you made when you spray-painted your girlfriend’s name on the side of a water tower. It wasn’t that we didn’t appreciate human achievement. We did and do. It was more the high-browed conversation that surrounded it. We didn’t have time for all that foolishness. We just saw beauty in different places and forms and then we surrounded it with a different conversation and language.
So when others saw what I could do with a pencil or brush, they immediately thought I was Picasso—although they had no idea who he was or why they said I was like him. They just liked his name and it made them sound important. I knew better and wanted nothing to do with Picasso. Maybe I “saw” differently. I don’t know. I suppose fish think the same thing of swimming and breathing water. They don’t think they’re anything special until you pitch them up on land.
Before my mom left this world, she made it a practice of taking me to the library. We went two or three times a week. It was air-conditioned, smoking was not allowed, admission was free and they stayed open late. We spent hours looking at art books and talking about what we liked or didn’t. Our conversations were not educated. We said things like, I like his smile, I like those colors, That makes me laugh, or That looks like it hurts.
I would learn later that what we were really saying was, That speaks to me. Because that’s what art does. It speaks to us, and if we speak the same language—and if we’ve learned how to listen—we either hear it or we don’t.
We “studied” the classics of Greece and Rome and then wondered what in the world happened during the medieval period. I didn’t know much but I at least knew that the world had taken a step backward if we were judging it by its art. Mom would spread the book in front of me, lay a clean sheet of paper across the table and I’d draw what I saw.
I never tried to make sense of the whole of the world of art. I took only what I wanted. Only what I needed. My purpose was rather singular. Unlike some artists who could transition seamlessly between various forms, subjects and styles, I couldn’t. Still can’t. So I concentrated on what I thought I was good at—and what I needed. That meant faces. Specifically, emotions. Those library visits taught me that emotions included the angle of the shoulders, the height of the chin, the interweaving of fingers, the extent to which a chest was expanded with air, how legs were crossed, angled or spread, how a toe curled up or down, how much light reflected off the eyes.
While my mouth had a hard time getting out what was on the inside of me, my hands knew instinctively how, when I got up close and saw how the masters did it, I intrinsically understood. I just knew, I can’t explain that.
Most were total screwups. Few, if any, had it together. They painted out of brokenness, out of despair, and often out of poverty. Hence, the skinny artist.
But I learned something. Something I’d need later. Fallen, broken men can make great art.
When I got older, I learned that I was attracted to realism, not idealism. Had no use for expressionism that sought to increase the impact of images on the viewer by distortion or over-simplification.