How I Became an Artist

After a lifetime of being a non-active armchair artist - I’m finally painting every day. I’m doing what I dreamed of for years and never brought myself to do.

As a young boy, my mother sent me to the Technical College in our city. There I attended painting and sculpture classes on Wednesday afternoons. I remember little about the painting sessions and have nothing to show from those times. Later I learned geometric drawing at college and somewhere I learned the principles of drawing perspectives. I have played with a pencil all my life, but my works are more graphics than drawings and all end up in the trash bin. 

I attended a painting course at our local museum some 20 years ago but managed to do very little except complete a few miserable pieces that I was instantly ashamed of.

That’s the story of my painting career up to a month ago.

One evening, out for coffee with friends, I met a tall bearded man who I vaguely remembered from college days. We began talking and at some point I asked him what he did.

“I’m retired,” he announced.

“How do you occupy yourself?” I asked. I was spending my own retirement in front of the television set.

“I paint,” he smiled. I was mildly interested, but I didn’t ask any questions. “I’m having an exhibition. I’ll send you an invitation.”

“Great!” I said, knowing that I would never hear from him again.  

Four months later a postcard arrived in our mailbox. It was an invitation to the opening of his watercolor exhibition. Anxious to see whether he was a real artist or not, I dragged my wife along. We were surprised at the large crowd in the modest house.

His work was stunning. The walls were covered with large watercolors, all framed in plain wooden frames and everyone a piece of art, ranging from figures to buildings to seascapes. Red dots soon began to appear as guests began purchasing. I stood gaping in amazement, slowly understanding that I was in the presence of a real artist, a man who put brush to paper and brought it to life. I congratulated him and he smiled and said simply, “you asked me how I kept myself occupied. This is what I do.”

After an hour or so we left. “Why are you leaving so early?” he asked as we shook hands and I thanked him for the invitation.

“I’m so stimulated at what I’ve seen here, I’m rushing home to paint,” I said, half joking and half wanting to believe myself.

“Oh, you also paint? You didn’t tell me,” he accused.

“I, er, dabble a little,” I blustered, looking for somewhere to hide.

“I’m thinking about starting a group here,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

At home, I took out my watercolors, opened the tins, looked at them and packed them away again, knowing it was all a game I played in my mind. I will never paint. I made for the sofa, arranged my pillow and switched on the TV.

Two weeks later, he called and said, “I want you to come over here. We’ll talk about your painting. Bring whatever you have to show me.” He rattled off an address and hung up. I pulled sketches and half finished paintings from different places and raced across town to his house. I was excited and nervous. I wanted to have this talk with him, but I didn’t want him to know that I didn’t really paint.

I found him sprawled on a sofa listening to Mozart playing at about 100 decibels. “Sit!” he boomed over the music. “Tell me about your work.”

I sat numbly, mumbling, lying, trying my best to change the subject. He glanced at the material I had brought and let it fall to the floor, sheet after sheet. He never looked at anything for longer than a few seconds.

“Let’s go paint,” he said finally, leading the way out onto a messy patio. Paints, brushes, pencils and dozens of plastic containers were everywhere. He swept his arm across a board, clearing the tabletop, put a sheet of paper down and said, “Put a wash on that. Any color.”

I stood frozen. “Pick up a brush, take water and paint and put it on the paper,” he said. It was a kindly but firm instruction and I think maybe he understood that I had a confidence problem. Slowly I picked up a thin brush and dipped it gently into a cut-down plastic soda bottle of dirty water. I lifted a spot of paint and put the brush to the paper.

He watched in silence as I made a thin stroke across the top of the sheet. “What’s that?” he cried. “That’s not painting! You do it like this!” He picked up a huge brush, splashed it into the water, lifted paint from another container and swabbed it across the paper. I watched as paint and water went everywhere. He mopped up the worst of it with a roll of toilet paper and pushed the brush at me. “You’re putting down a wash for the sky. Keep going.”

I did as he had done. He watched in silence. I made another stroke across the paper. “Good. Now dilute the paint and do it again.” Another stroke and another.

“Now plain water! Again! Great! Now stand back and look what you have done. You have painted a sky!” He cheered and clapped me on the back. “Isn’t that great? Now you’re a painter! Look at the painting you just made!”

And I had.

Two hours later and twenty years younger I left, exhausted, my back aching from bending over the too-low table but mentally elated. In my hand I clutched a painting.

He had made me sign my name at the bottom. “But it’s your painting!” I protested.

“I only made that first line across the top. You did everything else,” he answered.

I had, too, but under his instruction, following his orders, hanging onto his every word, too pent up and excited to breathe.

I’m painting now. Every day. I’m all set up on our balcony, which is an ideal workplace. My own collection of cut down plastic soda bottles and yogurt containers covers the tables. I throw away about half of what I paint, but I’m painting. My investment has been a board to work on, a few sheets of watercolor paper from the local stationer and one very large brush. And I’m finally using those paints bought so many years ago.

The TV is silent, Mozart and Beethoven are blaring away and my retirement is a whole new challenge!