Cabin and Cache. Oil. 16 x 20.
Acceptable subject matter for a child artist in my family of origin.
I’m pragmatic about birth and death since we signed up for both to live on this planet, however Memory Lane can be rocky when someone dies. The sister already married when I was born, transitioned a few months ago. Memories. The miniature dishes she gave me when I was two - and yes, I remember my second birthday party. The day she took me to the docks in old Valdez and left four-year-old me in the car with strict instructions not to get into her handbag. She was a beautiful woman and to my child perception she was a princess and her lipstick a magic wand. The temptation was overwhelming.
When she returned, she asked if I’d been into her purse. With the evidence slathered all over my face, I repeatedly proclaimed my innocence. Hot-rod red stained a half box of tissues scattered across the front seat. She failed miserably to keep a straight face while she delivered a stern lecture. Later, she held me up to her table for a finger full of butter to melt in my mouth. Glorious.
As an adult I couldn’t please her enough to be rewarded her company, probably because I stopped lying to her.
She is the last of the Perpetually Disappointed Family to die. While I pursued fine art, Mother and Sisters felt I was wasting my ability not painting snowed over cabins, caches and moose on gold pans, crosscut saws and animal hides to bilk the tourists. “There’s a lot of money in that kind of art, you know.” I painted one gold pan as a gift to please my mother, detested the eyesore ever after, but Mom finally had something she could brag about to her friends. Dad quietly went about supporting me with lessons and materials.
Even when we’ve been working at making art our way for decades there are family proscriptions skulking around the corners of our creativity. There are as many ways to discourage an art maker as there are kinds of families. What are yours? From, “You’re too smart to work with your hands” to “You need to get a real job.” The latter is possibly true to support making art the rest of the time.
Figuring out what well-meant, for-your-own-good family phrases stalemate our individual vision allows us to reframe and clear a space for our grown up art-making no matter how old we are.