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Oh, yes, he was a forest green boy, born to paint.
One cool May morning he sprang, fully grown, from
a gallon bucket of Sherwin-Williams exterior oil
paint. He spurted up and out and commenced a focused
dance. Dipping hands and brushes into pools of liquid
color, swirled around and around, spreading luscious
giant snail paths of rich, gooey, greenness in the
wake of his movements. The act was all there was
at that moment. He was an instrument meant to deliver
shiny, slippery, deep green to all he could reach.
That little green boy was barely three. He still
needed a cap to keep his head warm on a cool May
morning, in 1950. His hair was so blond and short
under the cap. It almost was no hair at all.
He'd seen grown ups apply paint before.
It looked like fun. Maybe it looked like a grown
up thing he could do, too. All it took was an open
gallon can, a paint brush, and a surface begging
to be painted. His thoughtful father must have needed
his help, otherwise why would he have opened the
can and gone away? He was a natural, and paint flowed
easily. Unlike other boys his age and older, who
might use paint to make an image of a dog or sun
or mom or dad, this green elf painted to paint.
Here was an action not a depiction. A three year
old in the flow. A three year old can easily get
into the flow.
Later on, perhaps when the paint can was emptied,
he was captured by adults and stripped of his otherworldly
tools and powers, at least for the time being. Either
Mom or Grandma Rose must have said "Show me
your hand" as she snapped the picture.
I remember the good sound of laughter, and no angry
yelling. Mom or Grandma must have told dad to shut
up since it was his fault anyway. I can also smell
the gasoline soaked rag and feel it being rubbed,
sometimes a bit hard, on my face and hands. Dad
started to do the rubbing, but Grandma took over.
I can see her big, almost puffy fingers. Her fingers
turned green as my greenness dissolved. The smell
of the gasoline was powerful. The scent of the paint
was even greater.
Open cans of paint were pretty much kept out of
my reach for some time to come. At least that must
have been what happened. I do remember a related
episode. My father used to take me with him when
he had some carpentry work to do for someone, a
small weekend job. The job might have been as simple
as hanging a door. There was the time I learned
that killing ants on someone else's balcony railing
with a hatchet might not be worth trying a second
time. I was three and a half and had no protector
to document the event or the consequences. Hatchets
were out of reach thereafter.
Most of my early childhood was spent with my father's
family, mainly Grandma and Aunt Dee. Mom's family
seemed invisible, although they lived only a few
miles away. Visits to and from my Mother's family
were rare, but I do recall the strange smells and
sights of those visits. As an adult I can identify
those smells and sights. As a child they were alien.
Grandma Kinnee kept a clean German house, with a
white kitchen, open windows, and the smell of bread
rising. Maybe a pie was baking or rhubarb sauce
was being taken off the stove and put into a bowl
for chilling. There were flowers everywhere in the
yard and the grass was cut so frequently the smell
lingered forever. I could run in the house and the
screen door slamming would announce my entrance
to Grandma even before I reached the top stair.
Grandma was home. It was the house I had been born
in, or at least where my mom and dad were living
when they had me. My one-legged grandfather died
when I was nine months old, and being his namesake,
Grandma Kinnee made me a prince. I was never more
than 200 feet away from her until I was four. Grandma's
was safe, clean, fresh, and home.
My Mother's family was "other." They
could have had horn growing out of places I wouldn't
know about. I felt uncomfortable with them. Mom's
mother was not called grandma. She was Mum. Mum
was Canadian. She didn't bake things, like bread
or cookies or pies. She didn't have much of a yard.
It was about the size of half a car. Her house was
dark and filled with things, like pictures on the
walls, a piano, books; piles of books spread all
over the place. On the floor carpets covered other
carpets. Each room had its own peculiar odor, unrecognizable
at the time, but heady and sexy as hell today. The
adult nose recognizes ambergris, sandalwood, candles
made of bees wax, teas with milk, marzipan, burnt
toast with marmalade. This house, to a tiny boy,
wasn't safe and comfortable. This was a place where
invisible things were afoot.
Most strange of all was an aunt who was seldom
around at all. She was the oldest of eight children
and most independent. She was sent to study art
at Cranbrook while she was still a precocious child,
sometime after her father tried to kill a fly that
Mary had drawn on the wall. Mary's room was upstairs
and held the constant aroma of the most bizarre.
I knew what it was even at the time, but couldn't
put my mental finger on it. I was too young to know
and only had a hint of recognition that triggered
memories of green paint. Mary's studio was filled
with untouchable things. The stagnant air loaded
to capacity with oil curing on canvases, copal medium
and turpentine in tin cups, and a palette with the
skin forming on globs of paint. This was too strange
for a tiny little child under his German grandmother's
wings.
Some flowers bloom right away, and others are meant
to blossom later. Each thing has its own time. While
the little forest green boy was kept clear of hatchets
and buckets of paints, he was still a little forest
green boy. The gasoline took off only the top layer.
The paint sank in deeper.
Maybe my mother has pictures OF THINGS, likenesses
that can be referenced to the visible, I might have
produced as a child. I don't believe she does. Because
I don't remember doing any that would have counted
to me. Unlike my aunt's fly, I had never produced
free work that might be seen as "lifelike."
I never took pleasure in representing the visible
world and saw no point to depicting it. On the odd
occasions I was goaded into making something to
fit someone else's view, I discounted the product
immediately. Sounds twisted or conceited, doesn't
it? Actually I hope you answered: no. I can only
remember being interested in making something that
had never been before. There was attraction in that,
the allure of the act of painting something instead
of painting something that looked like something.
So, today the little forest green boy comes with
me into my own studio. He's there with me every
day, or so I hope, popping from a can, squeezing
himself out of a tube, and wearing a skin of paint,
even if it's acrylic and not oil based.
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