I want to make paintings about sweet, heavy, easy things. Paintings of a carpenter bee that just died in my classroom. A fake piece of cake. Heart tacks and keys. Nothing too heavy, though. My life is just too hard right now. It is the heaviness that draws me toward the sweet little meaningless things. I remember that my Robin never wants to watch sad or dramatic movies. "Life is just hard enough as it is," he says. It's true. I agree with him now. It's just too hard. So I choose little unassuming things and spend a devotional hour or two painting them.
When I began to paint the carpenter bee, it had been lying on its back for a day or two on my classroom floor. Prior, it had been buzzing furiously at the windows. I suppose it was cruel negligence that I did not try to let it out. I was busy - and afraid it was something with more of a sting. Frequently, wasps and other winged stinging bugs come into my classroom. Desperately running up against the windows, they grasp at the outdoors that are so close but impossible for them to reach.
This carpenter bee, I thought, had buzzed its last, lying on the floor earlier in the day. It was quite a large bee, so a student spotted it. They walked over, crouched down, did not touch it - but laughed cruelly at its suffering walking away.
Later, it seemed still - like it had moved on from this plane, so I went over to it and found it was ever so slightly alive. The once loud and vigorous breaths now contained soft pauses, and subtle shaky inflections. I picked it up and brought it over to my still-life window, laying it on a pink cloth. I arranged it a little while it was still moving ever so slightly, its labored breaths held even more gaps. There, on the pink cloth, with some heart tacks placed around it, the carpenter bee was in hospice. It was a bit intense to watch it take its last breaths, to struggle so much, continuing to try to move around. After a few minutes, I focused on the painting, deciding I did not want to get too emotionally wrapped up in this death. So I painted, and it slowly breathed, and this went on for an hour or so. It was still alive by the time I finished the painting. I let it be and went home. The next day, it had died, and I had a memorial to a carpenter bee.
These days I want to make paintings that feel light - almost silly or odd to paint. The paintings tell a simple story of what I encountered that day and, on a whim, decided I should paint. I throw down a cloth, find the acorns I collected a few days earlier on a walk, and set to work. Other times, I have to search around a little bit to find the subjects. I was cleaning out the pencil drawer and noticed the sweet little stubby pencils. I love little pencil nubs so much that I have a hard time throwing them out - so into the painting they went. Although it's nice when the subject moves me, what's more important to me is that I make the painting - a devotional painting, I call it.
