Last week I finished an oil painting I had been working on for a month or so. It is a portrait of a woman of Native American descent that I met at a funeral. It is my experience as an artist that sometimes, I just MUST try to paint (or draw) a certain thing. I doubt if I am unique. This was one of those times.
The memorial service for my dear childhood friend was in Idaho, in a local park in a tiny town in a grand scenic valley north of Boise. The shelter house setting for the service was barely large enough to contain the crowd. It seemed that the whole town had turned out to honor their good friend. She was a special person in every way and if you were lucky enough to have known her or to have been near her, I am sure you would agree. God gave her joy and she shared it!
As the time of the service approached, church ladies bustled to spread out the potluck picnic. Laymen set up the folding chairs carted over from the church in their pickup trucks. The guests arrived in a steady stream greeting one another with small town sureness. One guest stood out.
A crowd creates a certain visual unity. In a painting , the crowd might be a series of dots or blobs in forms suggesting humans. They are rarely delineated as individuals and if one among them has too bold a color or too tall a form, the effect of the crowd as a group is disrupted. The floral print dresses with uncomfortable shoes, the well worn jeans, cowboy boots, and dress shirts-buttons buldging at the belly, the chidren squirming in discomfort trying not to mess their carefully combed hair, all came together in my eyes. Then she arrived.
An slightly older woman and her dog. She wasn’t a stranger to the others. They knew her but she was the kid who forgot to wear their uniform on picture day. She was Shaquille O’Neal at a swim meet . She was Heidi Klum on the runway. What did I see? A tall woman, maybe six feet or more, she walked with proud posture. A woman of that height is unusual and she didn’t slouch to hide it, she stood tall. She was elegant in her movement. Her small mongrel dog walked beside her unleashed and devoted. He was invisibly connected to her and she moved through the crowd with little thought to him. He was simply hers. Not wanting to stare… actually I did want to stare but I didn’t out of politeness, I turned away and the service began.
After the formal Eulogies, all were invited to share memories of our friend. I did. I went first. She was next. I was mesmersized. It was OK to stare at the speaker and so I did. Her eyes were amber, her hair was grey and blonde and dark and a little unkept. She wore Silver jewelry, two crosses, a bracelet, and a medallion. Her black T-shirt had a white silhouette of Jesus in sunglasses with the words “I’ll Be Back”.
After the service. I introduced myself to her and we chatted briefly. We talked about our friend and names, a subject I had brought up in my brief eulogy. She said her name was Pinard, that it was French and she didn’t know why she had a French name, when she was an Indian. (her word-her meaning was Native American). We talked about her dog and this and that. Her face, her presence, and her carriage intrigued me. I got that dreamy feeling that comes over me when I see something I want to paint. So I just blurted out. “Would you mind if I took you picture? I am an artist and I’d like to try to paint you. I’ll send it to you when I’m done, if I like it.” I added.
She agreed. I self-conciously snapped a pic.
Does this happen to other artists? You see something and it feels a little like love in that you can’t think of anything else until you start that painting. You want to capture a certain feeling or light or color or mood or I don’t know what it is, but you just want to do it and if you don’t try for whatever reason it is a waste, a failure. When I get this feeling, what I want to convey does not always work out. More often than not, it ends up in the trash can. But It makes me happy to try. This was one of those times I had to try. It sounds corny, but this woman had courage and it was unrelenting and it showed in her posture and her gaze. She had been a little down on her luck and my friend had helped her, she was fighting for her dignity. I admired her.
When I got back home, I started right away and I am happy with the result. I think I captured her emotionally to the best of my abilities. I still need to varnish it when it drys in a few months time and then I will send it to her in care of the church, since I didn’t ask her address or her full name. I hope she likes it. I do.
I am glad you enjoyed it. I try to write like I think and I had no idea it could be called profound. This flatters me!
I can picture the scene you described. Have you tried oils? They can be reworked easily and have a variety of opacity. I did not know that about Indians/ Native Americans. That’s interesting. I added the parenthetical to make it clear she was not of the country India.