How Making Art Is the Mental Equivalent of a Deep Tissue Massage

My daughter took me by the hand and told me it was time to go to school. It was an activity day. Parents and their children were invited to paint together.So, I took my keys and, still holding my daughter’s hand, we went to the car together.“What are you going to paint?” I asked.“I don’t know,” she replied. “What are you going to paint?”“I don’t know, probably a rhinoceros.” With me, it always has to be something like a rhinoceros. I don’t think you can ever have too much rhinoceros-related paraphernalia in your life.“You can’t paint a rhinoceros!”I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. Had she gotten confused by the intimidating size of a rhinoceros? Did she think it wouldn’t fit on the page? Did she think it wouldn’t hold still long enough?“You can paint anything!” I said. “You can even paint the sun, and the sun is much bigger than a rhinoceros. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. That’s one of those things you’re just going to have to learn to accept.”Sometimes being a dad means busting up fanciful illusions. It’s a hard job.“Daddy, you can’t paint a rhinoceros,” my daughter reiterated with the same irrefutable, dismissive tone that I’ve been subjected to all my life. Kids never explain themselves, neither do adults, particularly when it comes to statements that begin with “you can’t.”We got in the car and went on our way.We were among the first to arrive at the school. The painting area was set up in the gymnasium. I knew the place from my daughter’s concerts and basketball practices and soccer practices.The first task was to select a brush. Teachers stood behind a desk and gestured to mason jars that sprouted wooden stems with horsehair bristles that oddly resembled some unknown species of potted desert plant.I was glad we’d come early because the expectation seemed to be that we’d grab any old random brush and move on. Selecting a brush isn’t something that can be done via an assembly line. It takes a moment.I pulled the jar towards me and had a look. I glanced over at the paint, but that was further down the table and I couldn’t identify what we’d be working with. I was hopeful that it was acrylic, but it looked like it could be tempera paint. I had a sudden flashback to grade school of wrestling with an uncooperative glob of tempera paint that was somehow leaking water.My daughter grabbed a brush and she’d moved on to the paints, “Come on daddy!”“Is that tempera paint?”“What?”“Never mind,” I said, turning back to the brushes. I decided I needed a good all-purpose brush. Something with stiff bristles that weren’t too long. Something wide enough to move a decent amount of paint. After a moment, I selected a nice brush with an appropriately stained handle. The bristles were about as wide as the nail on my little finger. I gave them an experimental flick with my thumb.Not quite as stiff as a toothbrush. Perfect.My daughter and I gathered up our paint and we picked up our canvases. On our way to the table, one of the teachers stopped us.“You forgot this.”“What is it?”“It’s the instructions on what you’re going to paint.”My heart sank. I looked at the handout. It was like a set of build instructions that demonstrated how to paint a scene. The foreground was a silhouette of trees. The background was the aurora borealis.My daughter looked heartbroken at the sight of this handout. Luckily, she’d remembered to bring her daddy.“Is it okay if we just paint whatever we want?” I asked, then immediately felt foolish. Whether this teacher liked it or not, that’s what was going to happen. What were they going to do, force me to paint the aurora borealis? Even if they tried, I was confident they’d quickly conclude the objective wasn’t worth the effort.“Oh, that’s fine,” the teacher said in a tone of mild irritation.As I walked to the table, I found myself wondering why it would annoy her that we would want to paint something else. It reminded me of fourth grade when the English teacher used a similar tone to express his dissatisfaction when I decided to read The Three Musketeers instead of The Outsiders.For some reason, that made him angry.“I think she was angry,” my daughter said.I used the same line then that I did when I was in fourth grade, “She’ll get over it.”We sat at the table, awaiting one of my daughter’s friends. I made my first stab at the paint and was pleased at the consistency. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it didn’t seem to be tempera. I looked back at my canvas and began to visualize my rhinoceros.“I wish I’d brought a pencil,” I said.“Why?”“To sketch the rhinoceros.”“Oh daddy, are you really doing a rhinoceros?”“Of course, I have to do it just to prove to you that it can be done, otherwise I will have failed as a father.”My daughter just smiled. She’s a clever observer. She turns away and doesn’t make direct eye contact with the thing she’s observing, but she gives away where her attention is directed when she smiles. That’s okay. I wouldn’t want her to stop smiling.I decided to sketch out my rhinoceros with bright yellow paint. I watered it down enough so it was hard to see. That way I could cover up any mistakes later with darker colors. I began to formulate my plan for bringing this rhinoceros to life. I stacked the various layers in my mind like a Photoshop project. It took so much focus that I didn’t have any spare energy left over to maintain my perpetual stress and anxiety.Tension dribbled out of my shoulders.My daughter’s friend Denise showed up and sat down next us. Her dad was with her, he helps coach the basketball team. “What are you drawing?”“A rhinoceros,” I said.Out of the corner of my eye, I caught my daughter’s smile. It amuses her to inflict me upon her friends. Denise slowly looked from my painting to me to my daughter and back to my painting.I began to chat with Denise’s dad as our paintings took shape. Denise and her dad decided to do the aurora borealis picture. My daughter decided to do a lion. She managed to take my phone and call up a picture of a lion without getting paint all over the screen.There were a few tense moments when I feared my painting was going to turn out horrible, but then it started to take shape. There’s joy in pushing paint around a canvas. Even when you have a floppy brush, the paint somehow goes exactly where you want it to. I don’t know how that happens.Probably magic. That’s another one of those things in life you just have to accept.Denise’s dad looked at my painting and said, “Do you do that for work or something?”“I dabble,” I replied, pleased with the nice question.The time flew by. Around us, there was the buzz of children happily painting away. Electricity is called down from the heavens when kids get together to indulge their creativity. It creates a special kind of energy that serves to cleanse the soul.A bird’s eye view of the tables would have shown row after row of aurora borealis, one rhinoceros and one lion.Word started spreading around about my rhinoceros. Kids came drifting over to take a look at him. There was that firework crackle of mischief, even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It wasn’t a rule that we had to paint the aurora borealis. Still, there’s always a positive tension when you dare to do something new and creative and different.Our society mistakes that feeling as evidence of wrongdoing, and that’s the source of all our problems.“Wow!” one boy said.“Can you teach me to be an artist like you?” said another.My daughter didn’t look at them. She just stood with her eyes directed at her own canvas, but she was smiling again.The time drew short and people started to leave. Denise waved good-bye. Her dad clapped me on the back. “See you at practice,” he said.I still had to put in the toenails.A few minutes later, I looked up at my daughter. She said she wasn’t done with her lion but that she could finish it later. We were together in a nearly empty room. I looked down at my rhinoceros and realized that I could keep working on it, or that we could go home. “Want to go home?”She nodded.I picked up my canvas and started walking to the door. There was one family left sitting at the last table. The mother looked up as I passed and said, “Excuse me, can I see yours?”So I held up my rhinoceros painting.She smiled, and her daughter’s face lit up. “He’s cute.”“Thank you,” I said. “You can paint anything you know… absolutely anything you want. That’s just something you have to accept.”I returned my brush, sorry to see it go, but content that it would remain at the school for some young artist to use. Then my daughter and I went outside. We’d been among the first to arrive and we were among the last to leave.It was cold outside and the occasional snowflake drifted by. “Brrr,” I said.“Too cold for a rhinoceros,” my daughter said.“Too cold for a lion,” I replied.“Yeah.”“Well, we better get them home to show mommy and your sister.”As I slipped into the driver’s seat and I started the engine, I realized I felt better than I had in a long time. We’d been painting for about an hour and a half. Something about the activity seemed to have extracted toxins that had settled deep, deep into my bones beyond the touch of even the most penetrating healing hands.But it was gone now. You’ve got to train yourself to recognize those moments and be grateful.“You know,” I said as I maneuvered the car down the road that would take us home, “I think we should paint something together every week.”My daughter pointedly looked away, but I saw her smile. Then, as if it didn’t mean anything to her, she said, “Okay.”I smiled too, because I knew it meant the world.Thanks for your support: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% offI'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe