Colouring Outside the Lines
One Friday afternoon in the fifth grade, when all our work was done for the week, our teacher gave the class colouring pages and put a Joni Mitchell* record on for us to listen to. (I imagine so she could swill vodka in the cloakroom without being disturbed for a few minutes.) After our colouring efforts were pinned to the bulletin board, several girls gathered around to inspect them.
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11×14″ – coloured pencil on paper
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One girl pointed at mine and asked, “Who did that one?” When I piped up, she said, snidely, “Oh. I thought a boy did it.”
Because, of course, I had not only used wild colours and pressed my pencils very hard on the paper, I had also not taken pains to ensure my colours were perfectly inside the lines. Somehow, this defined me differently from all the other girls. As usual. I was not cute. I was not sweet. I was not gentle or elegant or graceful. I was not feminine.
The Secret is to Know When to Stop
Last fall, one of the household felines got attached to a tomato box. Cats are weird. Still, I accommodated him. I cut holes in the box for doors and let it stay in the living room.
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After sprucing up my living room, though, I realized I was very tired of looking at that ugly tomato box. I tried safety-pinning fabric around it, and even gave it a little floor with some leftover tiles from a project at work. I still hated it. It never stayed in one place, and neither did the new scratch post I was trying to train them to use (instead of my chairs). Plus, it was a tomato box. I don’t even like tomatoes, to be honest.
Skill
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Not long ago, I decided to paint the insides of the closets. Yeah, I know how that makes me sound.
Thing is, I’ve painted everything else in the Treehouse – the closets were the last frontier, and I left them for almost 2 years after I finished the rest. They were grody. Still, I avoided painting the last closet for a good month after I finished the one before it. Deep down, I didn’t really WANT the last closet to be finished, because then there would be nothing left to paint.
But then I got this idea that I should paint white sillouettes on the green closet door fronts. This was actually a trick I played on myself. It would help me avoid painting that closet just a little bit longer.
But then, I decided I had to design the sillouettes myself.
Dominion
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There are very few places in this world I feel more at home than when I am singing and playing music on a stage. I wasn’t always that way. I used to be far too terrified to sing, even for close friends or family. I was paralyzed, not with mere stage fright, but really, with a fear of even being HEARD singing.
Procrastination and Perfectionism
One day in 2005, my mom and I stopped into my favourite pre-loved treasure shop and saw a sofa that was so me, I fell in love. It was made of maple, with cane sides, AND it folded flat into a twin guest bed – a huge selling feature to someone who lived in a small space. I thought the chairs were a nice little bonus, but what I wanted was the couch. The springs were strong, and the upholstery, although definitely not to my taste, was actually in perfect condition.
$600 later, my mom and I heaved my old, worn loveseat over the balcony, and I vowed to slipcover the little set.
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I said the upholstery was in perfect condition, and it was. Until the household felines got ahold of the corners:
Love.
Mission Control
This is the table I bought 16 years ago, when I moved into the Treehouse (as I call my home). I bought this table down the road, at a delightfully dark and maze-like second-hand shop. It came with 4 Windsor chairs (not pictured), and cost me $300. The shop owner said, “Those chairs aren’t original to the table. They won’t last. But you’ll have that table forever.”
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She was right about the chairs. They (sadly, along with that shop of pre-loved treasures) are no longer with us. But the table eventually became (and remains) the central hub of the Treehouse. This is where it all happens. This is my corner of the world. This is Mission Control.
Make. Good. Art.
“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.” -Neil Gaiman
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I just read that quote yesterday in this piece on living the creative life. The point was no matter what happens in your life, nothing is so shitty that you can’t go on and make good art. In fact, shitty things, and mistakes and screw ups, are part of what propels you to make good art.
But I also took it literally. Recently, my musical mentor got my old electric guitar working again. Then he searched all over town for two months till he found a case that would fit it. His dedication inspired the need for some artwork. We had talked about our appreciation of predatory birds, and particularly, owls. That seemed the right choice.
So I took up my pencil and focused on the wings. I hadn’t thought about the rest till I got there. I tried and tried to get that face right, but the thing is, I made a huge mistake in the way I had drawn the body.
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The Treehouse by Dodie Goldney 