A humorous story about a child's failure to paint the picture of his dreams and what he learned about kindness from his teacher's response.
When I Paint My Masterpiece
My turn at the easel. I had been planning my picture all week. A cowboy on horseback crossing the mountains, my favorite image from the many westerns I had seen at the movies.
It was third grade and our enlightened teacher determined that each student in turn, in order to develop his or her artistic faculties and thereby a well-rounded view of life, would spend the last period on Friday, usually a study period during which we were expected to get a head start on the homework assigned for the weekend, painting a picture of their own conception, unattended by teacherly guidance, at the back of the classroom.
The immaculate canvas stood before me, awaiting the first brushstroke of the masterpiece I had in mind. I began with a wavy green line to shape the landscape. My first mistake. Now the outline of the horse, in brown, placed on top of the wavy line. Alas, the horse grew rather large as it emerged from the tip of my increasingly hesitant brush. Next the rider. But between horseback and the top edge of the canvas there was not enough room for a suitably sized cowboy. Better, I thought, to address that problem later. I would fill in the landscape first: a tree before the still riderless horse. The tree was not too bad, as generic trees go – the trunk was brown, the solitary branch from which a rustler could be hanged reached out (a bit too large, but no matter) toward the right hand edge of the diminishing space available for this paean to manifest destiny, a green canopy billowed on top. Back to the absent rider. I did my best. His torso rested on the horse, a leg down the side. His head was bent and topped with a hat slouched so that it might be squeezed into what little space remained. This was no Big Sky country and my cowpoke no Marlboro man, rather my hapless horseman seemed a deformed giant practicing equestrian yoga as his troubled steed stumbled headlong into a would-be cottonwood.
a child
on tiptoes pointing at a star
Then I saw what I had heretofore ignored: the white space, as yet undefiled, beneath the wavy line that represented the long lonesome trail traversed by my bedeviled buckaroo. Perhaps the Wild West could be won and my masterpiece retrieved from the failing light that now slanted through the window at the back of the classroom, a sign that the day was nearly done and that the bell would soon ring signaling the end of my artistic moment. I quickly set about turning the bloated and misshapen objects I had created into a background of . . . of what . . . foothills, I suppose, against which I might paint another horse, another rider, another masterly manifestation of my shoot ’em up dreams. I failed to consider what happens when one places one shade of oil paint upon another. My foothills emerged before my eyes a purpureal Boot Hill. Shade upon shade in this underworld, this abode of the damned from which no one may rise, a painterly perdition of my own design.
I was defeated. The playground through the window was covered in shadows. My fellow students were putting away their books and pencils. The teacher was about to join me at the back of the room. And then . . . a flash of inspiration. I pressed the brush into my favorite color – blue – and stroke by broad stroke brushed that blue across the entire canvas. Little did I know in those days about the processes of subtractive color mixing or the predictions of spectral power distribution. My blue became a dark purple, a sickly plum, a doubtful dubonnet. What now? Quick, the teacher was coming toward me. I dipped the now puce bristles into the yellow paint and proceeded to draw three rows of rectangles on the purplish background, which, because the paint there was still moist, absorbed the yellow, turning my rectangles into jaundiced orthogons.
My frustrated efforts to compose a mimetic world had finally come to fruition, albeit a simple and sadly over ripened one, when Mrs. Harris arrived, smiled, turned to see my composition, and . . . frowned, deeply. She was not pleased. What is THAT? she chided. A building, I said with faux poise, in a big city, seen up close. I had never been to a big city, but I knew they had tall buildings and narrow streets. Mrs. Harris hissed her Class dismissed, fixed me with a baleful look, scolded me harshly for wasting time and precious art supplies, turned on her heel, and left the room. Abashed, I picked up my things and went home.
dusk
an inkwell
in an empty classroom
Monday morning, I arrived at school having more or less forgotten my failure at the easel. When I entered the classroom, the teacher called me to her desk and, before I could say a word, apologized. Huh? As I stood there in silent bewilderment, she went on to say: I thought further about your painting over the weekend, and I came to see that it was a legitimate example of the expressionist style, something like a cross between Edvard Munch and Franz Marc. I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, but she smiled and I was relieved.
I owe Mrs. Harris a debt of gratitude for teaching me something about tolerance, magnanimity and, perhaps, something about modern art. Regardless, I remain to this day hopeless as a painter.
still life
in the old painter’s eye
a maple leaf on a pine box
Although it could be fiction certainly seemed like a memoir. With a very good lesson. Teachers matter. I still remember my D- for math in the 2nd grade from that old battleax. In my senior year in high school I scored 2nd class genius on the state mathematical test.
And as I look at the two horsemen and one horse woman sidesaddle riding on the beach painted by disabled painter on my wall, I can see how she managed to make the images so real I feel like I am there, on the beach with them, watching.
My twin brother was much better, at age six, at drawing horses than I. Also at short stories. In my junior year in high school, my epic tale of tragedy river run by canoe fell flat, regardless of the grade I got for it. It took me another 40 years before I dared to write another.
If Mrs. Harris had said the right thing in the first place, she wouldn't have needed to apologize for her inappropriate response. It's kind of you to see her in a different light.
