Someone once suggested that taking a sabbatical from painting wasn’t all that bad. His reasoning was that when you return, your work will be different. Yah! Your work will be awful.
My work, after a four year hiatus from daily painting, was embarrassingly bad. It looked like those clumsy illustrations in your high-school year book. I couldn’t mix colors; I couldn’t remember how to use medium; I couldn’t remember what medium
I used; and even my lifelong drawing skills failed me (hence the year book reference).
Poor Tom. He and the dog came in from their “tractoring,” and he st00d over my shoulder to see how I was doing. My response to his concern was to scribble out the face. They both sulked away with their ears back.
I stomped my easel to a back bedroom and closed the door. I called my friend Jean (a therapist) just to say, “Hi”. Jean is a witch and could see my face through my cell phone. “What’s wrong?” she asks. “I suck,” I answered…or maybe I said “life suc
ks” or “all is lost,” something mature. Jean says, “Well, would you like to tap about this?” With a sucking intake of air, I responded “yes..s..s…hic”.
It’s the tapping you all want to know about. She led me to tap around the crown of my head, inside and
outside my wrists and ankles, all the while saying, “Even though my painting sucks now, I can paint and will paint well again.” I did it 2 times and Bingo! I could paint like the wind. I could paint “with no mind.” The painting, “Yellow Leather Coat,” was finished the end of the next day.
I love painting and I love Jean more.
