December 5, 2001
�2001, by Kathleen Gibson
Take time for creativity�it will feed your soul
I love coming to this house. The windows are wide-eyed to the wintering prairie, and the afternoon light spills like warm honey over everything in here. Over the vast stone fireplace and the couch you could lose your whole behind in, if you�re not careful. Over the bowl where a single fighting fish is waving his blue-ribboned mane and surfacing for dainty sips of air. Over the walls, the bookshelves, the pottery and framed art. Over the teacher in her barely shifting rocking chair, and over her students�nine women seduced by a promise that when she�s finished with us, we�ll be transforming colored water and white paper into something very like art.
I almost didn�t come here. Almost passed the chance to let this woman�s gift seep into my spirit and free the dehydrated artist in my own soul. I couldn�t afford it; I didn�t have the time; I already failed three watercolor classes; I didn�t know if I could come all ten weeks. But my tongue said yes before checking with the rest of me, so the rest of me had no choice but to follow.
I�ve fought with watercolor painting for years. The transparent simplicity of the medium lures me into thinking that it must be easy. It wasn�t before. It still isn�t. But I�m enjoying this go-round more than any of the others, and under Judy�s gentle tutelage I may actually produce a wee painting good enough to give someone for Christmas. Signed, even.
It�s the surroundings, I think. This is a real home�where the living room is used for more than dusting and vacuuming, where whispers of generations of the same loving family echo softly at every turn�from the quick hug of a grown son in the kitchen to the man-sized shoes at the door, to Grandpa�s photo in the hall.
I came late to class one week after a long morning of word-wrestling, tired after a sleepless night and tense as a teepee pole. As the afternoon uncurled I felt the tension melting from the muscles around my shoulders like butter in the sun. There�s magic here and chemistry too, only no scientist could put this in a test tube�an ambient old farmhouse, Mozart�s music, women�s chatter, colored strokes on wet white paper, prairie majesty, and cookies at half-time.
�Darn it! Cleaned my brush in my tea!� Empathetic laughter ripples around the table and brushes smiles on all the faces. I glance down at what I�ve painted, surprised that it�s nice, surprised that it flowed from my own left hand. Maybe I can make peace with watercolor after all.
I�ll be sorry when these ten weeks are over. I�ve been reminded that homes are most beautiful when decorated with people, that our gifts are best used when they�re shared, and that taking time out to reflect God�s creativity is good for body and soul.
Oh, one more�that tea tastes better without the addition of washed out pigment.
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