Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [19]
In the history of mankind, no single person yet has learned to swim by having the strokes explained. At some point, they dive in. In art, that diving has nothing to do with holding a brush, pencil or chisel. It’s something your heart does and only then will your hand follow. You, me, any artist, cannot take the beauty that is woman and transfer it to any medium, be it canvas, stone or, least of all, film. Problem was, my art teachers had no idea what I was talking about. They thought art started in the hand and traveled up the arm and into the heart. They had reversed the process. Art flows out, not in. Though, I will say, if you’re empty, not much will flow out. Which might have been their problem to begin with.
In my education, every assignment was run through some Cartesian filter in which we sat back, scratched the stubble on our chin and “thought” about the art before us. We used that filter to reduce the work to a series of strokes, shades and hues. What kind of nonsense is that? Whatever happened to “Wow! That’s beautiful.” I’m not slamming the process of perfecting a craft, I’m slamming the idea that you perfect a craft solely by studying the craft. It’s a sickness that I’ve been trying to avoid since I first picked up a brush or pencil.
’Course, all this philosophical conversation never got me very far with my professors. Especially when it came to the nude. There was no getting around it. They just looked at me and raised their eyebrows. Paint the sucker! They thought my objections grew out of a dislike for hard work. So I invited them over, and those same eyes grew wide. My work ethic was in tact. By the age of eighteen, I had produced a larger volume of work than most of them had in their entire life, proving that my mom was the second-best teacher I ever had. I had come to art school having already learned most of what they hoped to teach me. Most of them had no idea what I was talking about. Was I an idealist? Absolutely. But once they saw the amount of work I had produced, and was producing, they could not argue with my work or craft. For me, the craft wasn’t the point. The point was the point. And most never understood that. Most of them were infected with a sickness they didn’t know they were carrying. And worse yet, didn’t know they were transmitting.
Despite my soapbox rantings and self-righteous indignation, I needed to graduate and they stood between me and that walk across the stage. Had it not been for the fading memories of my mother, I’d have told them to shove their sheepskin. Which brings me back to the nude.
In defense of my stubbornness, I had been looking for two things: the right face and the right figure. That’s all I wanted. One face. One figure. And preferably, the two went together. I had always felt that God made a few perfect ones, so I was waiting to find her and then have that face sit still long enough for me to fumble through my inadequacies and capture it and her on canvas.
Okay, in truth, I was afraid. Afraid that whoever sat there would see right through me, would see that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was intimidated, and when they stood up, walked across the floor and stared at my work—at themselves—they’d laugh at my attempt. In the psychology books that’s called a fear of failure, and when it came to my art—more specifically, the nude—it paralyzed me.
Completely.
6
JUNE 1, 5 A.M.
We pulled out of Gus’s and passed through St. George on our way to Moniac. St. George is made up of one railroad track, one grammar school, one gas station, one restaurant, one four-way stop and one post office. I stood in the intersection, scratching my head, trying to remember where they’d put the post office when I heard what sounded like a prop plane flying low above me. It buzzed overhead and I thought, What crazy nut is flying in this weather? Then I could have sworn I heard singing. The lights on the wings shot straight up, turned, barrel-rolled and