We Get To

It started with a Save the Date.

A small thing, in theory. A summer wedding in Newport. My daughter and her fiance had decided they wanted something whimsical — watercolors, fun, playful. A lighthouse, maybe. Something coastal. Something that said come to the sea with us this summer.

I said yes immediately. I love them. I love RI as it’s where I grew up. I love Newport, and of course, I am having so much fun with watercolor. I had time. How hard could it be?

I painted a lighthouse.

Then I painted another lighthouse, because the first one was a little stiff. Then I painted a sailboat, because what if it was a sailboat instead of a lighthouse. Then I painted a seascape, because what if it was the water itself. Then a beach, then hydrangeas, because Newport in summer is full of hydrangeas, and I thought, nothing says New England coastal wedding more than hydrangeas, right?

I painted, over the course of several weeks, easily three dozen small watercolors. Sailboats. Lighthouses. Seascapes. Beaches. Hydrangeas. Roses. The dining room table was covered with scraps, paints, brushes everywhere, and I kept the march from downstairs to my studio on the 3rd floor, a well worn path. Different paper, brighter colors, different brushes. I asked my husband, How about this? Should the sky be more pink or more grey? What if there is no sky at all, and we just focus on the lighthouse?

Hannah loved all of them. She showed them to Tyler who generously said, ‘you pick’.

Here is what I started to notice, somewhere around lighthouse number eight.

I was not doing a task. I had been telling myself it was a task, because I am a woman of my generation and I have spent fifty years approaching everything as a task — clear brief, deadline, deliverable, sign-off. But this was not behaving like a task. There was no right answer. There were dozens of right answers, all sitting next to each other on the dining room table, in my studio, and even in the recycling bin. I kept morphing one into the next as if the paintings were having a conversation among themselves while I watched.

I was, it turns out, playing.

I was also learning — but the kind of learning that does not have a syllabus or a ‘how-to manual’, though sometimes, I wish it did.

Learning watercolor is a learn by doing exercise. How much water, how much pigment, the quality of the paper, all matter - a great deal, actually. And the strokes, splashes, washes and marks got better, the more I played. It’s like a positive feedback loop. One minute there is a lighthouse that is looking quite right, but when the ocean starts bleeding into the rocks at the bottom, it becomes magical. (not to anyone but me, but that’s the point).

I was learning which brushes I loved, which paper I couldn’t waste an inch of, and which colors made my heart sing (can we talk about Payne’s Grey?) I learned that being less afraid and less cautious makes for better outcomes, and I learned that what I thought looked terrible yesterday, is pretty good today.

Right around this time, my son Will, getting married a few months after Hannah, also asked me to paint a Save the Date. Lucky for him and his fiance, I was getting better, had more confidence, and they wanted an abstract piece which came together in minutes.

the kids’ save the dates, a bit worn from going through the mail

With both of these Save The Dates, here is the biggest thing I learned and can safely say that I think it is true of any creative process, and possibly true of any life:

The end product is not planned.

It reveals itself.

For my daughter, I am in the midst of painting a suite of wedding stationary that include everything from invitations to a menu, a program, posters, place cards and many other pieces. I could not possibly know what any of these pieces would look like until I painted, and they chose, a Save the Date. I had to make the first mark to find out what the second mark wanted to be. Once the Save the Date said we are doing a watercolor lighthouse with splashes that is playful and whimsical, then I could start the invitation. Once the invitation existed, the other pieces could follow, then the next and the next.

For my son, a meditative few minutes thinking about what they wanted, and a few strokes and just enough water revealed itself to me almost right away.

For someone who prides herself on checking boxes of lists and to-do’s, this is not an easily embodied process. I had to exhale more than a few times and just accept that initially I had no idea what I would paint or what we would get.

Each piece is a mark on a canvas — or, in this case, a splash on paper — and the next mark only exists in relation to the one you have already made.

What color compliments this? What hue? What value? I cannot answer those questions in the abstract. I can only answer them in front of what I have already done.

This is, it occurred to me the other day as my husband and I just got back from walking the in Ireland.

There is a trail each day. And each day we would get dropped at the trailhead knowing our next inn was roughly 10 miles away. We walked the Mauméan Pilgrim Path because walking was the thing, not because anyone was waiting for us at the end of it. We were not in search of anything. The path showed us what we were looking at as we went, and we let it. (mostly sheep, stone walls and gorgeous sweeping landscapes).

a tiny sketch after the first day of the Famine trail

I painted a few sketches at the end of the day to try to remember the light, the beauty and the calm, but not even those sketches or Dan’s photos can do the place justice. It’s about doing it.

our inn in LeeNaan at the end of hiking

Like the painting.

The painting is it’s own kind of path, the wedding stationery is another. With every creative project I dream about and wake up imagining (thinking about collages these days), I have to actually get out the materials and dive in. Only then, do I start to even have an idea.

You make a mark.

You see what it asks of you.

You make the next mark.

It’s been raining for about five days. I am craving light to fall on the roses in the garden so I can get out there again and looking forward to being on the ocean at the end of the week to paint. The wedding stationary will be done in the next month, and then into print to be shared with so many family and friends. For someone who considers herself too much a beginner for public work, I have had a wonderful re-framing about the whole thing as I learn this new craft.

I get to do this.

I get to be the one whose hands make the small painted things for my daughter’s wedding. I get to infuse my creative energy and my eye and my best guesses into objects that will sit in the hands of every person who comes to celebrate her. I get to be a piece of the day — present in pigment and paper, in every place card, program and poster — alongside everyone else who shows up to love them.

What an honor.

What a gift.

To do this for my children and their partners who I love beyond reason. While my hands still work. While the light is still in the studio. While there is still time.

I get to.

— MJ