October 20, 2020: Nancy Jean Says
Hanging over my writing desk, amid paper clutter and books and cherished items, is a new painting. I’m the painter. I own the expression, though not the colors or the Colorado landscape that captured and emboldened my creative energy. There’s no question that the work is amateurish and will eventually land in a vendor’s booth somewhere with an orange sticker that says ‘$5 if you like it enough to give up one so-so hamburger’. But I’m the painter.
Although I’ve plenty of other great pictures to hang on this wall, this one brings joy in a year that is crammed full of melancholy and anxiety and wishful thinking.
First, I reflect on the drive through the San Luis Valley on my way to Leadville and the historic site of Camp Hale. My father went to Camp Hale in the late winter of 1944. I feel close to my dad as I view the broad agricultural acreage and look to the east at the Rockies. He was twenty years old and hadn’t yet seen mountains taller than the cliffs above the Pease River or Red River. One thousand times taller! Imagining my dad’s wonder and excitement at the sights was easy. I could sense his first realization that the world was much bigger than Texas.
The road itself is a marvel—it travels parallel to the railroad tracks over which the train carrying my dad and other troops traveled. But of course, the cars and busses and trains are recent travelers. Along the same path for a thousand years, men and their families walked or rode horses or wagons. They traveled north in the summer to mine for precious materials with which to improve their lives. Obsidian and silver and coal. Some stayed north in the winter because they had little choice. Most returned to southern valleys where they could farm or raise stock.
My father was a man of curious of creative nature. Even though this trip to Camp Hale could excite those feelings in someone as young as he was in 1944, the war and his part with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy was a harsh lesson in human depravity and utter survival. He became the man who rarely expressed feelings. He never returned to Camp Hale.
Finally, I see myself in my painting or writing as an ever-changing person. There are strokes on the canvas, the colors’ mix, or the purposeful invention of movement or light that I question every time I look. Why did I choose that? Why did I leave that without fixing it? What was in my mind at the time? Should I paint over it or paint another expression of this same scenery? This painting’s value is just that. It reminds me of who I was and am and want to be. It reminds me that I’m both growing and aging, learning and reminiscing, finding fault and seeing prospects.
And there it is. The painting is me. That is all.