Benched Week 71: framing our differences

I am standing in front of a painting of a city bridge with my artist son.  This has caught his eye, I think in part because it reminds him of this city he has adopted.   I ask him what he likes about the painting.  He comments on the colors in the shadows, the details, the rendering of the people.  I observe how the artist breaks up the strong vertical of the smokestack.  It is good to view it together.  To see it differently.



This trip to Pittsburgh is for just this thing: to hang out with Nathan and slowly let observations on life roll out as they will.  The bitter cold (minus 3 on the way here) has driven us inside.  But we have, for a long time, wanted to visit an art museum together.  This is the perfect chance.

Here I find my bench.  And my muse embodied.



Nathan and I are quite different in our approach to art.  And he frames that contrast in a way I had not considered.  He makes the distinction between a hobby and a project.  He is a hobbyist.  Art for him is an ongoing, open-ended exploration.  Art for me, he thinks, is more about completing projects: there is a goal and finite length.  Once completed, a new project arises.

It’s a simple contrast, but I recognize the truth in it.  I am drawn to projects.  Like this blog.   Like my winter doodles.  Like a new idea I have for drawing simple portraits of “winter walkers” – people bundled up in layers of clothing, sketched from quickly-captured reference photos during my travels.



And suddenly we have our middle ground.  We share stories of how hard it is to take photos of people in public.  I tell of the older woman in a park who pointedly asked me if I liked taking photos of children.  He recalls the person who ran after him to get him to delete the shot he had just snapped.  It’s fun to share stories from the trenches.



Near us, a small class of children is sketching an object on display.  It pleases me enormously to see this, for it reminds me of the times I took my kids to do the same.  And it makes me think of how my children are the biggest project I’ve undertaken.  But for all parents there is a line where the noun project can become a verb.  Across that line, we begin to project on our offspring our own unfulfilled dreams.  Or, in my life, an approach to creating.

And I’m thankful that Nathan has discovered such a refreshingly different way to make art – seen in the angular planes of wood he paints, but also in his hobbyist’s enthusiasm.

How good it is to have a fresh pair of eyes.  And a new framework.