A Paintbrush With No Eraser

Like a pencil with no eraser, you have to be thoughtful, for it is harder to get rid of the charcoal once the word is written.

With some things in life, you write fast. You want to get all you can, out onto the page, as fast as possible. Sometimes in life, the words come pouring out of you and you feel as though you don’t have enough time to express them. Sometimes you write things too quickly, only to be reminded you have no eraser and resort to crossing it out. That fear of not having enough time takes over and the artist rushes, thinking they will not be able to finish their painting. But art has not a time limit. Art is forever, ever lasting, ever changing. Art, we know to be real, a guarantee, a promise of beauty that can be kept forever, thoughtfully.

She has done this before, created masterpieces quickly. She knows now she doesn’t want a quick masterpiece. She also knows some things don’t take time, that the brush flows from the fingertips without the brain knowing what is going to stroke on the paper, and sometimes that is the most beautiful painting in the workshop. But she has done this before, she has painted without thinking, allowing her soul to exude onto the page, and drowning it with watercolor- so much so that the colors begin to merge into one. Those paintings were beautiful- in a way- but she always regretted how the colors didn’t stay themselves- how the exact point on the paper where the two colors mixed, turned grey.

She doesn’t want to watercolor anymore, she doesn’t want the colors she chooses to mix into unknown colors that are not what she wants. She has painted enough paintings to know what she wants, and it is not a quick masterpiece. She wants her next painting to be the project of her life. The painting that hangs in the studio forever welcoming changes, new colors, adaptations. She wants to learn things about herself every day, come home to the studio, and transfer them to the canvas. She wants the canvas to be so wide and tall that she never worries about taking up the entirety of it and finishing. She doesn’t want any pressure to have to choose her colors too quickly, sketch her draft before she knows what it is she wants it to be, draw in between those drafted lines, be unable to erase the charcoal for lack of an eraser.

She wants to slow down. She wants her art studio to be hers and give the key to just one other artist. She wants to give this key to someone who watches her paint and doesn’t want her painting to become theirs. So many times in life, other artists have quickly admired her masterpiece, hoping to be a muse, to become part of the painting, to know that one day when it’s finally finished, it will have been them that was her inspiration. She doesn’t want this.

She wants her art studio to be hers and only hers, and to share it with someone who loves that about her. Someone who accepts the key to the studio and visits in admiration. Someone who opens the door while she is painting and stands behind her watching. Someone who puts a hand on her shoulder when she’s frustrated, when she can’t find the right color. Someone who plays with her hair while she fiddles with the different types of shading. Someone who sits next to her and listens to what it is she’s saying, even though there are no words being spoken. She wants someone to enter her studio and walk around the museum of her mind without the unconscious critique of how they would have made a painting differently. She wants someone to read the placards and smile at the things they didn’t know about her, laugh at the things learned, cry at the pain she never shared with others. She wants this because that is who she wants to be for someone else. A supporter, a team mate, a partner, an admirer, an adorer. Sometimes the artist doesn’t want someone to tell them how the painting could be better, sometimes they want someone who loves it for exactly what it is.

Sometimes in life, you have to slow down. You have to hold your pencil and trace the words of what you wish to say, or the picture you wish to draw, and hold your wooden stick above the page. You hold it close enough to the paper so that you can imagine what you’re going to draw, but far enough away so not to carelessly make a mistake. A draft doesn’t need to be physical. It can be the imaginary outline of hopes, dreams, and desires.

Why of course, the masterpiece is not dependent upon the artists’ last brush stroke- for if the artist has good intentions, the masterpiece begins when they pick up the pencil, thoughtfully. However, to think about the future is to think about the present. There is no future without the present. There is no past without the present. One cannot exist without the other- for if it did, it would simultaneously cancel out its opposite. While the past can only become the past when the present moment arrives, making the past the past- the future is only a concept constructed within our own minds to cope with the fact that we are forever stuck in an everlasting second of a loop. A never-ending story, the present.

An artist can create a multitude of paintings in their life, however there is always one that makes them feel more than others. They will think to themselves how much time, practice, patience, effort, and thought went into it. They will reflect on this only when they think they have finished the painting. Contrary to mainstream belief, the artist does not think about the end of painting while they are still painting it. It is only when they believe to have finished, do they reflect on what needs to be changed. And so they go back into the painting and add more blues, or greens, and yellows. They look at things that are too sharp and smudge them to a blur, too vibrant and add water, too dull and add volume, too small and make bigger, too big and make smaller.

She doesn’t want to think about the end, she has spent her whole life thinking about the end. From the moment we are born, we are one day closer to death. Why drag art into that as well? Hang your canvas of life in your studio of love and thoughtfully paint forever. And then a little longer after that.

Sometimes in life, you have to slow down. You have to remind yourself that a paint brush does not have an eraser and there are no mistakes. Should you put something onto the canvas you do not like, you are unable to venture into the past to change it. You must simply paint over it, add color, add less, smudge, or change the size.

Sometimes in life, the artist gives away their past paintings, hangs them up in a gallery far away, begins a new canvas, and decides to keep this one with no end in sight.

Sometimes, the artist creates a project they don’t wish to finish, they simply want to work on, to write and to not erase, to paint and to simply add onto, to compose and to continue playing.

What do they want to do with it? A question everyone asks.

But sometimes, the artist falls in love with the art so deeply, they remember that the present is all that exists. It is the only thing we know to be real, the single thing in this expansion of the universe that we can guarantee, the sole promise that can be made and kept forever, thoughtfully.

She thinks he might steal her heart, but to steal something means it belongs to someone else, and the only person it belongs to is her. So he will not steal it, but she may gift it to him. Not in the past, not in the future, but in the present.

Like a pencil with no eraser,

a paintbrush with infinite colors,

a playlist on repeat,

unable to undo the past,

only able to continue writing,

continue adding hues,

adding songs,

she is thoughtfully in the present.

For that is all the artist can promise.