Posts Tagged ‘art and reminiscing’

Sandra was an hour early for supper.

She sat motionless at the table by herself. I quietly sat down beside her with a box of crayons and a piece of paper.

“Let’s draw something, “ I said.
“I don’t draw,” she retorted. I explained that we could do something together.
“What are some things you liked to do when you were younger?” I asked.
“ All I did was take care of children and cook,” she replied.

I picked up a black crayon and drew an iron skillet. I handed the paper to Sandra and asked her to put something in the pan. She decided on eggs. She drew them. I added some other details and she colored the picture. As we did, we talked about her life and a lot about cooking. When she was finished, she wanted to hang it on her wall.

A week later, her roommate (who normally stays secluded in her room) came to the activity room and wanted a “skillet” picture too. “I want sausage gravy in mine,” she said. Hence….another skillet picture…

“Painting is so other people can see what your thoughts are. I don’t think about what I am going to do… I just get quiet and the thoughts come out through the paint. It’s a surprise.”

Ardis quickly identified with me when we did art together. We found ourselves at a table painting, each one of us in our own little worlds. She is 90 years old and paints out of her soul. She is not concerned with her art being a little different….almost surreal. She is going for the “process”….the process of creating… creating in the moment….not even planning it all out….just letting her picture evolve.

She looked at me while I was painting and called me a “thwarted messer arounder” I asked her what she meant. She said, “You are living the creative life as an adult, the life that was thwarted in you as a child.” I said, “How did YOU know?”

She looked at me with penetrating eyes and said, “I don’t know how I knew that. I just do.”

Perhaps she was thwarted in some ways too, and she now has time and freedom to paint what she calls whimsical paintings. The one below started with a memory of when she and her best friend took their cats and dolls into the woods and had a picnic. What started out to be a tree turned into a rainbow. She added more “figurines” later.