Treasure Hunting Is Like my Art and Helps Me Reveal Hidden Feelings

 

 

I am a painter. And when I can find a moment alone, that’s when I go searching for precious things that seem desperately lost to me. I like to envision the soul as something that is hidden behind layers of thin sheer veils. Every time I stroke the canvas, gentle fingertips pull back another veil. The thicker the canvas surface becomes, the closer I am to revealing something hidden inside.

  

Gone 

 Oil on Canvas. 36” by 48” copyright Christy Boyer. 

Sometimes I think I know what I am painting about, or searching for, but then something unexpected happens. For the last couple of years, I have been slowly working on a series of paintings inspired from the book, Joan of Arc: Her Story by by Régine Pernoud, Marie-Véronique Clin, and Jeremy duQuesnay Adams. The latest painting in the series is entitled, Joan Marries Fire. As I worked, I kept in mind Joan’s young body burned, her indescribable pain, her ascension into heaven, her final gown of peace. I thought of myself as well: what parts represented the fire, the freedom from pain, or the white dress in my own life.

  

 

 

But then, something unexpected happened. Many who knew me thought that “Joan” was meant to be my son, Clay. Now, let me tell you about Clay. First, he is 13 and he is beautiful. Secondly, he cannot walk, or run, or talk, or hold his head up, and his communication with the outside world is limited. Well, I was floored at these assumptions. I even felt as if I had failed. No! It was supposed to be Joan! I thought to myself.

  

 

I looked at the painting some more. My dream Joan was there, yes. I was there, yes. Oh! Yes, Clay was there too.  I saw him now; his head so often extended and turned to the side, his pale ghostly skin, his limp whispering hands. How did I not see it before? Through his life you could say he has been married to fire. I am almost sure he longs for freedom from his broken body. I wonder if he dreams of a gown of comfort to caress his twisted bones, like the one Joan wears in the painting.

  

Joan Marries Fire. Oil on Canvas. 36” by 48” copyright Christy Boyer.

  

 

 

Maybe, I needed to paint about how my son has always lingered in that hesitant spot between life and death, just as Joan did as she exited fire into rest. But, probably, for me, painting him directly was too raw. And so the Joan of Arc of my dreams willingly stepped up into his place and stood there between me and the canvas as a sort of armor. I could look reality straight in the eye with fantasy’s cloak of comfort draped coolly on my burning shoulders.

  

 

So, painting is a tool that helps me reveal hidden thoughts, at least to myself. But this makes me ask the question: What happens then, when my hands become twisted with age and I can no longer hold a brush, or if my vision becomes too blurry to see, or if my mind slips away like a mind sometimes does? How will I uncover my most intimate thoughts without painting?

 

At the end of his life, my grandfather sat hunched in the nursing home one day, weeping over a catalog of tulip bulbs. Gardening had been his soul searching work. Well, after he shed his tears, he found something else to replace gardening: letter writing. He wrote letters of comfort to hundreds of people until the very end.

  

 

I believe we will always be able to find our soul’s work. Helen Keller couldn’t see or hear and we all know she found her soul’s work more than most of us. And I believe, though my son lie broken, mouth slack, body limp, eyes rolled back, that somehow, he has found it. We just don’t have a name for his kind of soul searching. It is one shrouded in mystery. But, that very mystery is what we must embrace in order to find our own treasures in the dark. That shrouded mystery, I believe, guides my brush in the still quiet night. I want to say, that his and mine are from the same celestial place. And, I don’t want this soul searching place to be metaphorical. I want it to be real and tangible and alive. And when I line up the treasures I have found in my son beside the treasures I have found in painting, and I see their connections, I can only conclude that this place is real indeed.

DETAIL from Joan the Maid Hears the Voices of Saints

Oil on Canvas. 36” by 48” copyright Christy Boyer.

 

 

Christy’s painting website can be found at http://christyboyer.homestead.com/index.html. You can also visit her blog at http://thehouseofnana.blogspot.com.

 

Comments

[lois]

Your words touched me even more than your painting, which is quite wonderful. I really lost in when you spoke of your grandfather weeping over the catalogue of tulips.

What an amazing spirit you have.

[Jen]

Wow. What an amazing post, and such an encouragement for all of us to take the time to find what inspires us and uncovers us.

[Sue]

Oh, so tender and touching. Thank you, Christy, for your amazing gifts and ability to help us see and understand.

Sue Spaulding

[writer jobs]

i do to :) i feel you now :S