As a kid, I did nothing but sit and draw if I could. Of course, since mom was deaf, dad was gone, and we were somewhat poor, paper was a problem. We had some friends, actually, who ran a boarding house in downtown LaCrosse that were fairly comfortable, and indeed, that’s where my dad stayed when he first came to town, and met and married mom. But he was long gone again, working construction in Alaska, far away, and had stopped sending money. Anyway, one of the family members worked for an office that had tons of paper invoice stock they replaced, and I got a huge stack of invoices right before Christmas one year.
What a thrill! Paper! So exciting! I could sit and draw for hours and hours and not have to worry about running out!
Other neighborhood kids were out racing around pretending to be cowboys and Indians, or Nazi’s and American soldiers and playing war, and shooting each other. I would participate when I felt like it, but prioritized sitting around drawing. One could draw after dark, even.
We would play pretend so well, we even held hostages in the garage, tied up, and others were charged with their rescue. We held funerals for dead squirrels and birds, and since the grave yard wasn’t far away, we could even find small bits of good stone to use for grave markings. There were piles of them just laying there near the swamp, as I recall, rejected by the stone cutters.
Life was so different from today. How kids grow up now doesn’t prepare them for survival, or for reality at all. Without a phone or other electronic device, they get bored.
I was often boring, still am, but, hey, I’m never ever bored! I know my own brain has such stuff in it, and my brain wants more! I’m curious! Nosy! And I see things art training taught me to see.
I see reflected light. I see values, light and dark, that most folks never notice! I see reflected colors everywhere. All the shades of green, so many. Painting landscape is difficult, because green is so very varied in shade, hue and value because of the way light hits it.
I wish I could find a few of my old paintings. There were some that got hung in a real estate office that offered to share local artists work, and then shut it’s doors and went away. I’ve lost other art as well. My large scale plywood sculpture disintegrated and began to fall apart, and I had to take it down. Only have one decent picture of it. Well, maybe there are more, but I’d have to go through boxes of pictures hidden around the house, God alone knows where. Under the basement stairs? In the attic? Under my bed?
Someday, I keep saying.