This Distance We Call Love by Carol Dines

Author:Carol Dines [Dines, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orison Books
Published: 2021-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

The following spring, I began teaching watercolor one night a week at the local community college. My students arrived with their supplies, culled from an expensive list I posted on the college website, an investment in their talent as future painters. Their average age was sixty. I broke the process down into what I thought were doable steps, but many of my students had never learned how to draw. They didn’t understand color or perspective, or even how the weight of paper affected their paintings. They hid their work from me as I passed, pleading, “Don’t look,” even though I always found one good thing about each painting. “I like your shadow.” “I like that tree.” “Good barn.”

But deep down, I wasn’t convinced art could be taught. You can teach technique and art appreciation and art history, but in the end, an artist has to see something that needs to come to life. Most of my art students wanted to imitate what they saw and the closer the imitation, the happier they were with their paintings. I began to think of most peoples’ lives as imitations. I shared this theory with my wife.

“So, what?” she said. “At least they’re trying something new.”

I liked my students though, especially the older women who brought cookies and iced tea to keep us all awake. As they sat painting, they discussed their children with amazing frankness. One of them had a son who had been in and out of treatment. “Meth,” she told us, looking up from her first wash. “Terrible drug. He’s a different person now. His wife won’t let him see the kids.”

Another nodded, mixing a puddle of Payne’s Grey on her pallet. “My son has three children by three different women. Sometimes he can’t make child support, and the women ask me for money. What can I say? They’re the mothers of my grandchildren.”

They made me feel better about myself. They made me feel every family had its issues.

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