"Coming Home"

Exploring a concept that hit close to home.

“Coming Home” 24 x 36 Acylic on Canvas

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Last week, I shared some of the creative incubation that happens as a painter. Ideas marinate for some time before the work of art plays out in a physical form. I don't doubt it happens for many people like this. 

It is fascinating to experience, and I seem to get the most clarity when looking back after work is finished. I get clarity on how it evolved, and as an artist who likes to "think" she is "planning" out her work by doing studies, the beginnings don't really play out that way. It is like a stew that marinates and surprises you at how delicious it turns out.

The new work, “Coming Home,” is an excellent example of this. I was teaching at the Providence Art Club and was plotting some exercises that would not involve "painting" but would involve visual skills and emotional concepts simultaneously. 

I asked students to list 10-15 intangible concepts they could explore in their work. I told them anything you couldn't search and purchase on Amazon would be considered an intangible concept. (I think I am funny in class, but now I wonder if students chuckle to be polite.)

Since I always participate in the projects I give students, I made my own list.

Right at the top was the concept "heartbreak." I circled it. This was what I wanted to explore. 

I paint a lot of passion and intimacy, but when the pendulum swings into the opposite of those heightened emotions, do you experience them more fully? What did heartbreak look like anyway? I was about to find out. 

It's interesting how many situations and people can break your heart. But does your heart only break when it involves something or someone you love intensely? Something you want intensely?

It was playing out in mid-December, and I was being stoic with my son, who has been away for some time attending flight school for the Marine Corps. He was wrapping up a challenging training phase and was planning on coming home for Christmas...until he wasn't.

This news came with the added drama of his father talking him into returning his airplane ticket and planning to come home the day after Christmas. Then as it turns out that we found out that was not an option. He was missing a holiday at home.

Suddenly, all the power struggles that come with sharing a child of divorce hit me as if he were 5 years old instead of 25. 

The weight of feeling dismissed, not being seen, and having my son be pressured (again) by his father blindsided me. 

I had not felt this way in years. The stockings were already filled, and menus had been planned (Marines eat a lot!) I was really devastated. 

I assumed all these emotions had passed as we all aged. So why did it hit me so hard that I was reduced to tears in my studio? 

Back to what heartbreak could look like since I had the feeling part down pat. I began cutting shapes, which was part of my planned assignment for the class. First, I cut small little shapes into tears. Then, I arranged strong lines that felt abrupt and disorienting. 

Then I softened, which seemed to be the next phase of heartbreak. Finally, I cut a paired-down mother shape and a son shape. I layered the shapes and cut some openness into the mother shape. I even wanted to embrace the shadows that happened while photographing it.

I hesitated to share it with the class. It felt vulnerable. 

We moved on to the next week, where I brought flowers and plant life into the class to cut up to explore new ways of expressing shapes differently. The vulnerability was still playing in my mind and in my life. 

I snapped photos of compositions, knowing that there was something there. 

On the last day of class, I took out my watercolors and referenced the shots of compositions I had been creating. By this time, the weight of my heartbreak had been shored up and frankly rationalized. 

I am a grown-up, I reasoned.

He'll get home eventually (mid-January, and yes, I made him open his stocking just like it was Christmas day) 

But the drape and soft sorrow of these shapes lingered. Experiencing heartbreak means you are human; it heightens your experience of love.

This is not the first time I have tapped into the full-bodied emotional content of motherhood to produce art, and it always catches me a bit by surprise as I don’t set out to have it play out across the canvas.

The first watercolor I produced felt lighter and freer. When I listed it for sale, it sold immediately. Sometimes you are even a little brokenhearted when works you have grown to love to leave the studio. :) So I kept going…

Boys in the Trees 9 x 12 Watercolor

I have produced several more with this idea in mind. The colors, the composition, the fragile trail of tears. I challenged myself to replicate the light feel of watercolor onto canvas. Could I do it? I shocked myself with the ease of this piece. It felt light, transparent, and delicate. Within several hours, with no breaks, the piece was done. Just what I had hoped. Heartbreak passes. Heartbreak teaches you things. Heartbreak can be turned into beauty.

“Coming Home” 24 x 36 Acylic on Canvas