The Artist I Buried

My great grandfather was a painter.

He worked in oils, and painted these incredible landscapes. Occasionally a portrait or a still life, but mostly landscapes. He had a very particular style, easily identifiable as a Zilsberger painting. There are several in my family’s various houses, and we treasure them.

His daughter – my Gramma Ruthie – was also a painter. She picked it up later in life, in her 60s in fact. She loved watercolors, and in the later years of her life, particularly enjoyed painting flowers and florals. I have one of her originals on my wall, and another on some bookshelves.

You could say that the artist thing was in my blood, but I just never felt it.

As a kid, I loved to color, but not so much to draw. I’ve always loved crafting things and making things, dabbling in a bunch of things here and there. Nothing serious. Nothing that I would have considered truly “artistic”, in that I defined artists as People Who Could Draw Things That Looked Like Real Life Things. Like people. Or landscapes. Or animals, even.

Once, in college, I randomly pulled out a piece of paper and sketched the profile of a woman. I’d never drawn anything like that before.

It was good.

It was also the last time I tried. I chalked it up to a fluke, a moment of accidental luck that the pencil did what I wanted it to do. I kept that drawing for a long time tucked in the back of a journal, but after years of moves, I lost it.

I did spend some time doing calligraphy (and even got paid for it) in the years after college. I’ve always had a love for letters and lettering, especially handwriting of all kinds. I had quite the collection of pens and nibs and inks, but then my career started to take over, I had a baby…you know how it goes.

In the intervening 20-something years between college and now, I haven’t really done more than a doodle during a conference call. I never could part with my calligraphy supplies, but they stayed in a box, gathering dust and moving around the Midwest with me over the years.

In February, we lost my Gramma after 93 years.

That might feel like a non-sequitur, but bear with me here.

The year prior was a difficult one in many ways. Gramma’s health was declining as her Alzheimer’s advanced and after she broke her hip. My mother was diagnosed with cancer and went through several months of aggressive treatment. (She’s on the mend now and in full remission, thankfully).

As the winter thawed and spring showed up, something in me…changed. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m usually okay with words, but this one escapes me.

It’s not the kind of change that’s like “today I’m determined, dammit” and you take on something with fervor.

It’s not something palpable, like physical change.

It was far more subtle than that. A shift in…spirit? Soul? A quieting?

I’ve been poking at it a lot, really, because I wasn’t sure if I imagined it. I’ve settled in a contented place that I haven’t felt in probably my entire life. A quiet, gentle peace with things. With myself. With my life, what’s in it, what’s not. Even my mental health issues. Acceptance, I think they call it. But it’s more benevolent than that.

In the midst of all of this, I felt the strong – and I mean undeniable, un-ignorable – urge to create. I pulled out craft supplies. I dusted off the lettering pens, and fell in love with Instagram and Pinterest again as they helped me find other lettering artists and ideas for crafty things like hair bows for my horse showing daughter.

And I picked up drawing pens.

Remember, I haven’t drawn a meaningful thing in over 20 years. But there were these patterns in my head. I’ve always been drawn to patterns, to the soothing and satisfying nature of repetition, or tessellation, or dots and lines and swirls.

So I started to draw. And this came out.

And this.

And more.

The craziest part to me was that not only did I not recognize what was coming out of my pen onto the paper, but other people liked it. Real Artists(TM) liked it. It felt like I had broken through something, some kind of barrier that I never even knew was there.

I consulted a near-lifelong best friend who also happens to be an incredible artist. I texted him asked him what the hell was happening to me.

He said simply: “Welcome to the awakening.”

Casually, like it happens all the time. Like he wasn’t at all surprised. Like it was just a thing that sometimes happens, and that eventually happens to artistic types.

I cried a lot.

You might be reading at this point thinking me a bit dramatic, or ridiculous, or off my rocker. That’s okay. I’m okay with you thinking that.

Because it’s like there’s been a missing piece to my complicated puzzle all this time, and it just sort of settled neatly into place. snap. And it has fundamentally changed me in a way that I don’t think will ever get undone.

That’s a big pile of emotional floodgates right there. Because of things like personal identity. And creative expression. And redefining at a very primal level who you are when you’re tipping right into age 41.

It’s emotional for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s like a part of my heritage has come back home, and asked me what on earth took me so long to arrive.

When Ruthie died, we let all of her art supplies go to an organization that does art programs for nursing homes and domestic shelters and such. I have but a few of her brushes and a well-loved watercolor palette. That’s all.

But that’s okay, too. Because my art – whatever that is or becomes – is just that. Mine. And it deserves its own collection of paper scraps and paint-flecked brushes and ink-stained fingers and smudged, lumpy erasers.

I don’t know where this has been in me. But I think Ruthie and Great Grampa Z are hanging out in the cosmos somewhere, smiling and laughing, whispering “let it go, kiddo.”

And so I will.