Pat Taub
GUEST POST by NANCY RULLO
The model slipped her robe off and slid into a pose elongating her legs, torso, neck and arms. During the one-minute pose, artists moved charcoal across large sketchpads. I watched Judy’s hand translating the model onto the page in confident strokes. The thin charcoal in my hand broke in half; my sketch looked reptilian.
Finally, in what seemed simultaneously 10 seconds and 10 minutes, the timer beeped. The model changed position. How would I get through three hours? I didn’t belong here, with my blackened fingers and smudged paper.
A life art class similar to one the author attended
My husband had died of cancer a year earlier, leaving me bereft in the town where we lived for 40 years. I was 67. Several new widows, artists, befriended me, gently nudging me into an exciting foreign world.
Judy, a lifelong artist, was returning to painting after her husband’s illness and planned to go to a sketch group, taking me along. I recall saying, “I’ve tried drawing, but I am not an artist.” I am a writer, but after my own cancer and recovery, followed by my husband’s illness, I hadn’t been writing. Words often failed me.
The author was plagued with self doubts when she first started to paint.
After three hours, with my hands and clothes covered in charcoal, and pages of blurry awkward figures, I couldn’t wait to return. I told my friend Ellie about my experience in the sketch group, and she offered me drawing lessons in her tiny studio. I learned some basics and felt proud of my “skill.”
Accomplished at drawing a cactus, I joined a weeklong painting workshop and proudly arrived with my package of amateur acrylics, set up my easel, and looked around. I recognized the other students, all accomplished artists, their work in galleries. As I was trying to set up a palette, they were practicing adding light and depth to lovely work. The teacher was kind, and though my paintings turned out mostly brown, I plodded through, feeling inadequate, but determined.
The author progressed to a painting workshop but still doubted her skills
One winter, considering driving to Beaufort, NC to paint by the sea, I confided in Ellie. She leaned close, looked me in the eye and said, “If not now, when, Nancy?”
In Beaufort, the other students were experienced, faster, and knowledgeable about color and tone. In one workshop we were asked to create a certain tone of gray before painting. At lunch break I sat at my stool, weeping in humiliation. After an entire morning in which the others were painting, my “gray” was still an ugly purple-green-black.
I bought some blank postcards and sat alongside the tidal river drawing gulls, boats and lighthouses with graphite and colored pencils, and sending them to Janet, a supportive friend. I also painted small canvases of seascapes that pleased me. After Beaufort I took many drawing and painting classes, each class awkward, each time feeling like the clumsy old lady sitting in the back, often actually being the clumsy old lady in the back.
The author’s sea gull painting
Finally, in a difficult drawing class, I misunderstood the week’s assignment. The second week the young students presented a few quick sketches in their journals. Somewhat embarrassed, I opened my huge sketch pad to eight 12” X 18” pages covered in complex drawings, collages, quotes and haiku, delineating a weekend voyage to a beach. The teacher’s amazed expression showed me that my creativity had suddenly cracked wide open.
Realizing that I had been trying to create art proscribed by others, I stopped taking classes. A pin I wear says, “Never Apologize For Your Art.”
In my new studio room I write and paint each morning. Sometimes I paint flowers, seascapes and birds on small canvases, and have become fascinated by abstraction. I paint and draw postcards to mail to friends and family, using graphite and colored pencils, acrylic and watercolor. A friend currently has 35 of my postcards, and plans to hold a postcard show at my wake!!
One of the author’s abstract paintings
Next month, I will have 6 pieces in an art show in Brooklyn. I have spent 10 years saying, “I am not really an artist,” but I will never say that again. At 77 I am unapologetically an Artist.
Nancy Rullo taught nonfiction and fiction writing at Hudson Valley Writers’ Guild, in colleges and privately. A member of poetry performance groups The Bardettes and the “all right girls!” she appeared in venues from Massachusetts to the Carolinas. Her poems took first place in the Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley. Haiku published in Japan, US and England; ghazals featured on The Ghazal Page. Her poetic and visual collaboration with Gay Leonhardt, “The Odd God: an introduction,” was presented at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Essays can be found on WordPress at: riverbynan.wordpress.com
