I Can Tell You More of This

I was being called to completion.

 

I could feel it, that annoying mosquito that won’t be swished away.

Finally I gave into it rather than fight it.

 

I reached up, to the top of my refrigerator, which is where I store my watercolor painting supplies. It is a safe place where I figure my children will not be compelled to either look or destroy a work-in-progress.

 

My watercolors are most definitely about works-in-progress rather than an “all at once, keep at it until it is done” approach.

 

Both work, mine is by necessity rather than brilliant invention.

 

Today, I pulled her down.

 

It took about 45 seconds to become angry because somewhere, somehow, someone had moved my brushes.

 

I had finite time to work on this project so I filled a cup with water and dipped my finger into the water and then into the paint and onto the page.

 

“Limitations be gone!” I instructed myself and the thin air as I began to paint.

 

As I moved color and water across the page I realized this must be a divine thing, this painting without a brush. This finger-painting-meets-watercolor exploration I have never heard spoken of in any book or website I have visited for instruction.

 

I painted and I got angry.

 

I got angry at the subject of my art: myself.

 

Angry at the scenario it pulled me into – this necessity to paint with my fingers. The child-like-ness by necessity thanks to the brush gremlins invading my space.

 

I plugged my thumb into the black and started fingerprinting myself onto the paint and onto the page. Angrily I printed and printed and printed and a-ha after a-ha after a-ha met my thumb, followed the flow up into my heart, underneath my eyelids and my tears flowed, meeting the water in the cup, meeting the water on the paper.

 

My anger gave way to relief which gave way to gratitude.

 

My tears married all three as the color married the paint and the page.

 

I paint to express what can not be held in words. Through putting the paint on the page, more words pour forth, more words that were held more deeply inside me are given permission, and room, to be expressed.

 

My painting is drying now, waiting, to see if it is finished, if it is ready.

 

I have an idea it will probably say much more to me as the days roll forward.

 

     

This is the sort of essay that is published in Daily Passion Activator, the ezine from Julie Jordan Scott. Subscribe today for free.

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© 2009
Julie Jordan Scott