An Accidentally-Amazing Paint-Party – at Golden Valley Brewery!
Last night’s Paint-Party was amazing!But it almost wasn’t.
I don’t know about anybody *else* on planet Earth, but I’m discovering that I’m having a difficult time adjusting from nothing-on-my-daily-to-do-list for months/years-at-a-time, to suddenly having a full life happening all around me, and the awkward amygdala-hijacked brain-hiccups that occur whilst trying to keep up with it. Much less on top of it.
All day yesterday I knew I had to get ready for the Paint-Party. I knew what time I had to arrive there, and I knew how long it would take to get there, and I knew, therefore, what time I needed to get in the shower. Meanwhile, I was going to paint my little heart out, because I’m down to the last 2 weeks before an art show.
I was very seriously adulting.
I reminded myself that I needed to be in the shower at a certain time, but my mistake was that I was relying upon my stove clock that is still showing the time before the time change. Oops.
Adulting down the drain.
Just as I was thinking I needed to get in the shower, it occurred to me to look at a different clock. And holy shit, I didn’t have a luxurious hour in which to get ready, I had to leave in 3 minutes.
Adrenaline, my drug of choice, kicked in.
Hair got slicked-back, makeup got slapped-on, deodorant got reapplied, and I grabbed what I needed to skedaddle out the door. As is so frequent in my life, I had that nagging feeling I was forgetting something.
Just before I got out of town, I remembered what the thing was. My credit card reader. Needed that. So even though I was running late, I turned around and went back to the house and got the reader.
I got rained on coming and going, but hey, slicked-back hair is impervious.
I called Robin (AKA, my partner) to get a pep talk about all of this, and shared with him my fears that my brain was leaking out, that something was obviously wrong with me, that maybe I wasn’t cut out to be in business anymore, and really, maybe I shouldn’t even be allowed to be an adult. Y’know, all the things.
Having had a front row seat to the audaciousness of my life for the past 8 years, he assured me that this was normal (yes, he used the n-word), that I’ve been anxious before, and that I always pull it off. He assured me that he had faith in me, and confidence in me, even when I wasn’t feeling it for myself. It took most of a 45 minute drive to get me to a calm spot.
I pulled into the parking lot and began loading up my dolly, upon which I haul two oversized plastic bins, two easels over my shoulder, a stack of canvases on the top, and a bucket of paint brushes in my hand. I pretty much resemble Dick Van Dyke in the show Mary Poppins, except I don’t make a lot of music while I progress. Perhaps I should consider blowing a kazoo while art-schlepping. I could take requests.
As I was setting up, there came the moment when I had to pull out the paint for the particular painting. Now this particular painting, of a waterfall, required that we first paint the entire canvas black, let it dry, and then continue with the waterfall and the gray rocks around a pool. Black. Lots of black.
As I looked into my bin to pick up the paint, I was startled. There was a distinct lack of black.
I ran back out to my car just to see if perchance I had put it elsewhere. Nope. A definite lack of black.
<cue a demented version of an AC/DC song>
That was when I realized that I had left an entire bottle of black paint at a previous private Paint-Party. I had put it aside in a safe place in case we needed to use it again. It was evidently a very safe place.
My mind was spinning, and I could feel that creeping chemical brew of panic and shame flooding through my body. There was a part of me that wanted to crawl under the banquet tables and just hide and wait for the participants to go away. Another part of me thought maybe I could sneak out to my car and drive home in my lack-of-black shame.
There I was, having not showered, having arrived late, and having no black. Now what?
I prayed to the gods of pigment for a solution.
I picked up the brown and the green and the purple and made a puddle on each person’s easel. I blended it myself and discovered that I came up with a rich chocolate brown. (I decided to go with a more edible connotation, rather than one that was more scatological.)
I passed these out, noticing the look of surprise on the faces of several participants as they oggled their paint puddle. I just kept smiling. Though it was more like grimacing to hold back the panic.
I took a deep breath and decided I was going to completely own the reality of the situation, rather than pretending anything differently. I was going to be real with these people and show up, flaws and all, and make the best of the situation, and ensure they had a wonderful and meaningful time.
Yes. I. Was.
I started with my regular opening, asking who was doing this for the first time, introducing myself, talking about my philosophy of art, assuring them that this was a safe environment in which to curiously explore and let their own inner artist out to play… and then I completely owned up to my snafu.
I admitted that I was having a difficult time transitioning from doing nothing to doing lots of things all at once. I asked if anyone else was having a similar struggle. Several hands raised. One woman expressed how it was daunting that she used to be able to do all of these things effortlessly, and now those same things we’re causing her a struggle.
I could feel the room relaxing, as my own heart left my throat and settled back into my chest.
So we applied our chocolate brown paint where there should have been black, and we mentioned how the cliffs in Oregon were primarily made of sandstone, so this looked more realistic. When we made our rocks, one guy joked about how they looked more like potatoes, and sad potatoes at that, and how one of them even look like a yam.
Another woman mentioned that she’s been looking for a gift to give her sister, and her sister loves purple and orange, and how this painting looked like a brownish-orange and purple perfect gift to give her. So that it was better than if it had been black.
I was astonished, make that blown away, at how incredible these paintings were turning out to be! One woman was clearly a gifted and experienced artist, but even the three children in the room, two of them quite young, did an incredible job with their paintings! One young boy kept expressing how much fun he was having, with exuberance.
(And at the end of the evening, the woman who had commiserated with me about reentry stress, chatted with me about living here in Oregon, and it turns out that both of our ancestors knew each other in the 1850s, in the little town of Port Orford, which was settled by my ancestor. We had goosebumps.)
I simply have to share the final photo of this Paint-Party! Look at those results! Despite my faux pas, despite my series of snafus, despite my moment of panic and self-doubt, we all showed up together and made the best of getting together, to create together, after such a long period of isolation.
And I told them that if they really want to paint it the original way, they can show up next Saturday, April 30th, at Growlers Tap Station in McMinnville, where I will be back, with black! More Info & Registration for that event, here.