Remembering Frustration

Since I’ve encountered a recent artistic block, I’ve decided to visit some of my past art works.  Today I’m looking at my “Frustration” pastel I painted way back in 1998. I was working on a series of paintings on figures in various period costumes and was waiting on my model. She was twenty minutes late, but I had plenty to work on so I wasn’t too worried. When she arrived, she flew in and rushed to flop on the old couch in the studio.  Her appearance was uncharacteristically haggard, her hair falling out of a messy up-do and tears were streaming down her face.  “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said “but this day was a disaster!”  I assured her it was no problem.  She went to on to explain about her apartment flooding, her backpack with all her books and notebooks ruined in the water and on top of all of that, her car wouldn’t start and she had to beg a friend for a ride.  Tragedies, I have had them too.  Who hasn’t? 

 As she sat there bent over and trying to gain her composure I realized her pose was perfect. I had been going through my own trials lately ( two little ones under age two and a crumbling marriage, while trying to finish my senior year of college, working part-time and interning too, in a big city where I knew almost no one), and there before me, sat all those frustrated energies I’d been experiencing daily. I told her not to get up, just to stay just like that and I began to sketch her. Her exaggerated features seemed to ooze out of my fingers and I truly engaged myself in an artistic trance.  She was so tired she fell asleep in her pose, and I finished an hour and a half later feeling like the whole session was cathartic for both of us.

 Natalie was ecstatic when she saw it.  She knew what I’d been going through; we often talked as I painted her.  We both knew it was a painting of the two of us, even though she was the only “model.”  She gave me a hug and I gladly paid her extra.  I felt a weight lifted if only for a little while that day. I would like to think she did too. 

 It now hangs at my house. I have had several come by to me and say that they’ve felt just that feeling as well. Years ago, my father, recovering from a stroke, said that painting really spoke to him when he came home. He suffered from partial paralysis, speech difficulties, etc from the stroke and knew frustration too. 

 It’s been said before but…Paintings are worth more than a thousand words, and sometimes they are beyond words at all.