Painting and Loss

Hydrangeas and Pitcher, 8 x 10 inches, oil on panel

I have this hand-blown glass pitcher that I bought in an antique shop. I’ve been wanting to paint it for some time. It is tall and slender with elegant curves like some teenage fashion model, gangly and sensual at the same time. The handle curves down to rest on its hip in a defiant shrug. It has a lot of personality for a pitcher.

It’s a fitting vessel to show off the hydrangeas that surround the house. Tall, dark, smooth and elegant against soft and fluffy pastel clusters.

And the baseball. It’s been hanging around the studio for years now, waiting for this cameo appearance on the stool that came from the second-hand furniture store back in Texas.

Set up against the bare wall of my new studio, the pitcher and flowers cast a cool shadow doppelganger, another pompadour flower, another curving handle, another set of hips.

I grasp at the frozen moment, treating it with unthinking leisure, clinging to what I thought was there. Following the light, moving closer with each brushstroke. It is only later that I realize this is not a painting about what is there. It is a painting about what is not there.

We usually think about painting and what we gain. We paint and we gain beauty, inspiration, introspection, accomplishment, maybe even admiration. All good reasons to paint.

But painting is as much about loss as it is about gain. The loss in every choice, every brushstroke, and every breath of the artist, everything not recognized and not painted.  

The blossoms wither slowly. The shadow switches roles. The light pours like sand through my fingers.