I am not a sportsman. I am less flexible than most two-by-fours. There is no meal I can't mangle: just ask anybody who lived on Mac 2 West in 1990-91. For all I know they still tell the story of the time (one of the very few times) I used the floor kitchen. I set my Kraft Dinner water to boil and wandered back to my room in search of a book to read. While still combing the shelves for the perfect novel For That Moment, I heard running footsteps and a bellow:
"BREAD--NERRRRRRRR!!!"
It sounded like Doom on two legs out there. I cautiously opened the door and beheld the don of my floor. Craig stood all of five-two, but he was not a man to be ignored. I once saw him pick up a man who stood six-four, clean and jerk him, and then pitch him across a room. I stepped out into the hall before Craig could yank my arm out of its socket, and half-ran, was half-dragged, back to the kitchen. Rounding the corner, I found flames shooting up all around my pot of boiling water. Some of them were licking the vent hood. That's the kind of cook I am: I can burn--have burned--water.
Oh, and there's something else I'm not: good in a panic, at times when, say, I've started a fire that threatens to burn down my residence. My mind shuts down and takes my body with it. I'll stand there as if rooted, with a vacuous "look-at-the-pretty-flames" half-grin drooled on to my face.
But of all the things I am not, an artist is perhaps the thing I'm not the most.
Remember the crayoned drawings your kindergartener brought home, the ones you oohed and aahed over and awarded pride of place on the fridge, while privately thinking what the hell is that supposed to be? Some of those kids could probably outdraw me.
Early on, art class was an exercise in humiliation worse than gym. I was a strong student academically, and I absolutely hated having my nose rubbed in the fact that there were things at school I couldn't do. The better art teachers would stress the creativity aspect, but all I ever saw was my own ineptitude. Something like that painting at left was as far beyond me as the moon. No, Pluto.
Some people, when faced with a display of talent they couldn't hope to equal in a thousand lifetimes, react with admiration. Not me...not for a long time, at least. For most of my life I regarded painting and sculpture as completely irrelevant. If forced to look at paintings, I could barely conceal my disdain.
Thankfully, that attitude has melted away in the past five or seven years.
I still have my prejudices, mind you. Many of them. While I can, at long last, appreciate the effort and skill that goes into creating a piece of art, comparatively few paintings reach along my optic nerve and captivate my brain.
They pretty much have to have water in them, for one thing. I can't say exactly why this should be: I'm no more a swimmer than I am an artist. But I find the sight of water very calming, even if it's framed in the middle of my living room wall, as the painting above is.
We placed the winning bid on that work--"Shoreline Encounter" by Brent Townsend--at a silent auction in Campbellford two years ago. Townsend, who designed the Canadian two-dollar coin, paints the kind of picture that I lose myself in.
Here's another: "After the Rain". This was painted in Killarney Provincial Park, a place not all that far from my dad's. If I had this view out my window, it's a fair question as to whether or not I'd ever leave home.
It's that Canadian Shield, I think. I remember once trying to explain to my father just how boring the land in Southern Ontario is: flat, empty, devoid of rocks and trees and lakes. To which my dad replied "well, it gets boring up here, too, you know...all those rocks and trees and lakes..." He was kidding, of course--the love of the north country has been imprinted in my genes.
My dad and stepmom got us a painting by Lisa Mullola called "Loon Bay" a year previous to our acquiring "Shoreline Encounter". A reproduction does not seem to be available online. But it's every bit as beautiful: two loons gazing at each other across a flat and rippling expanse of pond.
We plan on a modest collection. Not purchased as an investment--people who do that, in my opinion, have a bank vault where they should have a soul--but because it brightens our home and our life.
"Tranquil Waters"--Brent Townsend
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