The Artist is Still at Work…

I boarded a plane in Tulsa headed to Atlanta and sat next to a lady maybe around my mother’s age. We said hello and I sat down. We didn’t engage in conversation but just settled in for our flight.

I noticed after a while her writing on a small piece of paper a list of “Things to paint” and then soon she was scrolling through pics on her phone of paintings. There came a moment close to the middle of our flight, when I asked are you an artist? Like most of us, she discounted herself right away. “Oh no, I wouldn’t call myself that.” We began to talk and she shared with me about the journey to realizing she was creative and how she started painting.

She shared with me about a ministry she is part of in her church working with recovering addicts and how they give a painting to a participant each month. This ministry has given her a reason and purpose to paint, but now she has to come up with ideas each month. So that was her “list” she was brainstorming.

She then started sharing some of her work with me.

She showed me a portrait of Flo, she was the first African American portrait she had ever done. And she showed me the process.

She started with a picture of Flo, a beautiful young woman and friend of hers. She talked to me about creating the gridlines for perspective and proportion. She told me about prepping the canvas. She shared about the different types of paint she has learned to use. She told me about this first step… “get the paint on the canvas” and from there, things are so much easier painting on top of paint instead of the bumpy canvas.

Then she showed me the moment in every painting that she calls the “ugly phase” and how every artist arrives at this moment and has to make a decision, “do I keep going or do I give up?”

As she shared this, I felt emotions rising up in me, tears started to fill my eyes. She continued. She started showing everything she did to measure, to assess, to readjust, to look at where she made a mistake, to look again, to reblend, to shadow here, to adjust here, and I was in awe. 

The hours of time, the minute details, the persistence, and the steadfast commitment to Flo. I couldn’t believe it.

I think in my head, I just thought, you start a painting like Bob Ross, and you do a little of this and make a happy little tree here and the process is linear. Start to Finish. 

I did not realize that this might not be what artistry always looks like. I did not realize that the process could get worse before it gets better, that mistakes are made and fixed, reblended and more paint added. More fine details and fine touches. Walking away, coming back another day, gaining a new perspective, letting it breathe, coming back again. A process of commitment, readjustment, attention, and such care.

And of course, my heart and my mind could not help but see and experience the symmetry in that moment of an artist, a creator, and its commitment to its creation.

I was so moved…moved to the point that I couldn’t hold back my emotions. And I started to cry and grab for tissue. 

As she showed me the journey of creating a masterpiece, I said to her, with tears running down my face,  “I cannot believe your commitment to her, your commitment to making her beautiful.”

Just like Flo, your life is the masterpiece, the story that is being written. There is an artist, a creator, who is committed to finishing, completing, and perfecting the masterpiece that “He” is creating. Every one of us will have a moment or moments in our life that look like the “ugly phase”, where things are not at all like the filtered, Instagram-worthy picture we were hoping for.

There is going to come a moment, where it seems things are too dark, where surely the artist didn’t intend for things to be like this, surely things are not supposed to look this way! Or a moment when a piece of the picture seems deformed. Or where things appear so bad, that you would just rather give up.

It is wise and good for us all to realize that we are all living in the artistic process of a creator and its created. Each one of us.

It is an experience that is forever filled with missteps, smudges, redos, touch-ups, adjustments, reshaping, blemishes, mistakes, frustration, discouragement, and constant work. Yet as each piece takes shape the masterpiece of our lives will slowly be revealed. 

My dear, the master artist will perfect, caress, and gently form YOU and make you into nothing less than the beautiful radiant, One and Only, YOU. You can absolutely count on it. 

So if things look “Ugly” just wait my dear….yes just wait, that artist is still at work.

From My Heart to Yours