2020 COVID-19 – July 27 It has somehow been two months since I last posted on this blog. 😶 It’s not for a lack of will or drive. I am simply quite excellent at quitting and got caught in the tornados of daily life. Perfection is the enemy of good.
When I was eleven years old school was a place I felt forced to go to. I hated school and violently protested going. I was good at art, creative writing and very little else. Later on I enjoyed science and history class but felt plagued with plasticine teaches with whips for tongues.
My vitriolic opposition to school at that age landed me under the wing of my art room teacher. The smell of poster paint and moulding clay still brings back the memory. Coloured jars of liquids caught the light and cast shadows on the walls. Walls that seemed to be painted in another colour than the merciless leprechaun bile green and rage inducing pink that covered the walls everywhere else. Gloss painted on the lower half of the wall and matte on the upper half. The gloss made for easy wiping of foot prints and sticky juice box spills.
Being in that art room with that art teacher, Mrs. George, made the nuns who ran the school less scary. And the strict classes less miserable and the itchy green pinafore uniform less itchy. Just kidding, that shit was made of an insufferable fabric totally not suitable for the heat and sun.
Mrs. George drove a red Toyota Corolla and I knew the sound of the engine pulling up outside the school.
I wanted to quit school and run so far away but Mrs. George and her art room made it easier to pass the day.
She encouraged me to paint and draw. Something at the time I loved to do. She made it seem worthwhile and available to study art and encouraged me to enter school competitions. With her encouragement I scaled up one of the pieces I worked on in class to an expansive piece of 24×36 paper. She showed me how to get the sprawling tree in the bottom right to organically extend branches over the people dancing and cavorting below in party wear and mass frivolity. How to make sure the one merrymaker who climbed the tree to have a better look stayed in proportion. I used poster paint and pen and markers and my soul to create the scene. And it still hangs in the hallway of my mothers home. Fading and warping on the poor quality paper. In all honesty it is terrible by many standards today or any day.
But in 1988, it was great and I was proud. We entered into local school contests and it won each section climbing up to finally to be a finalist for the best primary school artist in the country.
The awards ceremony was held at a very fancy auditorium in a mall designed with large green title on almost every surface accented by red venting ducts. It was the 80s after all.
The Prime Minister was there to meet all of us young contestants and our paintings were displayed in the reception area outside of the prize giving theatre. I shook his hand and posed for him with a picture and he felt very thin. The way old people do when you are so young and they seem so very old in way you could never image yourself being.
The auditorium was freezing and I felt faint and had spaghetti legs when they called my name to receive my award for first place. I was the best primary school artist and the wood framed plague with an engraved high sheen metallic face glittered under the lights. They spelled my name wrong Tracey. But I didn’t care, it was square and heavy and Mrs. George was so proud. I pictured her smiling as she went home in her red car that day.
There was a daytime television spot that wanted to interview me. My white blonde hair with the white of my shirt and skin blew out under the luminescent production lights and I had to wear a sweater to be seen. A stranger called the house, phone books did their jobs, and commissioned me to recreate a painting of a stamp with an indentured woman labourer. I did the commission and he was very pleased and I was very proud.
The years past and I graduated from the school with the nuns and the half glossy walls and from Mrs. George.
I kept painting and won third place the following year for a painting of a promenade were a man sitting on a bench looked directly at the viewer eating an iced cone. A woman pulled a reluctant child and dog over to the left. This also still hangs in my mothers house. And it is also terrible. (By many standards)
But something had changed and the turmoil of puberty and life and perfectionism made me enjoy painting and drawing less. Each piece left unfinished behind an irrational fear of not winning more awards. Behind some wall of waiting for praise and prose. My teenager angst ridiculed my talent for not naturally leaping and bounding. Like how it felt when I was young and worked with my soul. For having to put in the effort and practice. Surely practicing was a sign of not good enough? I didn’t practice. And many things happened because life isn’t a vacuum. I quit many things including getting better because it felt easier than trying.
Anyway, I have gotten better and better at quitting over the years. Fast starts and hard stops. Quitting by slowly moonwalking away from responsibilities. Leaving things undone with the promise of completing them…never.
I started this series of “Women to quarantine with” at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was in lockdown.
Quaranteam
That time gave me space to wonder what it would be like to be forced into extended, separated time with anyone, past or present.
These are some women I’d be fascinated to spend endless hours talking to. I’ll do this series weekly….if I don’t quit first.
Xo
