It’s been said, apparently by that bagel guy Einstein, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And yet, I inexplicably continue to agree to participate in situations that require me to paint things.
The thing is, I don’t paint things. But twice in the last six months or so I have found myself at the Kimball-Jenkins School of Art, paint brush in hand and nervous sweat forming on my brow. You’d think I’d learn.
Monday evening was the most recent experiment, as I took part in Intown Concord’s painting party, where folks from around town paint images of the city to be auctioned off at the group’s annual general meeting March 13.
At least I thought it was just “people around town.” I was expecting to join a handful of other novice painters, only to hyperventilate upon receiving the email detailing the evening’s proceedings. Why? The guest list included celebrated local artist Melissa Miller, McGowan Fine Art gallery director Sarah Chaffee, leader of the Concord Arts Market Katy Brown Solsky, heralded painter and Insider feature subject Saad Hindal.
And me.
There were others who I wouldn’t classify as professional painters, but that list was headed by Jessica Fogg, a veteran of two previous Intown Concord painting parties. And Solsky didn’t show, mercifully lowering the qualified painter-to-Keith ratio.
The only other painting I’d ever created – outside of grade-school art projects starring pieces of macaroni in the lead role – was an image of the Green Martini that represented the aforementioned inaugural painting outing at Kimball-Jenkins.
That experiment, an assignment for the Insider, produced results best viewed from about 35 feet away. This time around I was creating a piece that would be scrutinized at a very public auction. I immediately began to wonder what the smallest amount a painting had ever raised was. At least I had a chance to enter the record books.
Thankfully, the evening included guidance, and expert guidance at that. Lee Roy Johnson of Kimball-Jenkins – the instructor for Colors and Cabernet, although my class was led by the equally estimable Karina Kelly – was on hand, and pressed into duty 30 seconds after I arrived when I gave him a rundown of my resume (it was blank) and asked what sort of image I should select.
He guided me to one that didn’t feature any zany angles or strange perspective, an image of two buildings rising above a foreground of trees. He may not have known it at the time, but he was also about to provide step-by-step instructions on how one completes a painting.
Which he did, expertly and without hesitation. He taught me to start with the images in the back and work forward, how to create depth in things like clouds and trees, and how to cover up for small oversights (like leaving a space between the two buildings that doesn’t exist in real life, just as a random, totally-didn’t-happen example) in the sketching process.
Johnson was the star of the evening, by far. He was patient and encouraging, and genuinely wanted me to learn about the process of painting. And I did. There are still significant limitations – accurate perspective remains beyond my grasp, and I still paint from a writer’s mindset planted too firmly in the literal, which made it difficult to think as abstractly as I wanted to. That meant what were supposed to be random splotches of white to add depth throughout my clouds routinely came out far too linear.
But I still managed to create a painting, from start to finish, in a little more than two hours. It’s not the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen (in the last eight minutes), but it’s clearly two buildings and some trees. It might ultimately raise $2.93 for Intown Concord, but hey, it’s $2.93 more than they had yesterday, right?
I’m still not a painter, and probably never will be. But I no longer dread the act of painting, thanks in large part to Johnson, and Kelly before him. If you gave me some brushes and a canvas, I could create something that someone out there could (probably) identify.
In other news, if you see a guy in a mustache-and-glasses disguise dutifully bidding on my painting to drive up the price, it isn’t me.
