Did you know that patience comes in many forms?
I always used to say that I learned patience through sewing. Because when you are sewing, you have to be relatively patient. The results don’t come together for many hours, if not days, or weeks, sometimes months, if the project is demanding enough (like my wedding dress or a quilt).
So, imagine my surprise when I started at the bottom, as a beginner, with paint. Watercolor to be exact. My first paintings were alright, but I could tell right off the bat they’d be better if I could simply learn to wait. Could step back. Could let the work b r e a t h e before adding the next color, the next layer, the next element.
But, I had learned my patience through sewing. And that kind of patience included a need to wait and see all the elements come together gradually, but it wasn’t a patience born from needing to stop unless I wanted to stop. I could move from step to step without ever pausing. I could sew one bit and immediately sew another bit and eventually, a garment would be born. Never in the process did I have to forcibly wait for something to dry, to wait to proceed to the next step with nothing but time standing between me and my goals. On occasion, I may have run out of thread or forgotten to purchase a notion to complete a project, and I’d always find myself growing irritable, seeing how close I was to the finish line yet not being able to cross it fully.
Painting forces me to confront that irritability often. If I go to fast, I risk ruining all of the work I have already poured onto the page. There is no ctrl+z button to press, no seam ripper at my side ready to unpick my mistakes. Perhaps I get lucky and can dab up the excess water on the page, start again. But more often than not, it’s game over. Go back to the start. Try again another day.
It’s a humbling feeling, to be sure. To be confronted with my own irritability, those parts of myself I don’t like all that much. My failings, my flaws. It’s vulnerable, too, knowing I am just a beginner, playing around in this new medium and learning as I go.
I am certain painting has many lessons to teach me, but right now, I'm oscillating in the middle as I learn how to expand my definition of patience. Apparently, I had yet to meet my edge, to test it, to try to reach beyond it, feel outside my own confines. I wonder where doing so might take me.
