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.
The artist has done this before, created masterpieces quickly. The artist knows now they do not want a quick masterpiece. They also know some things do take less 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 the artist has done this before. They have painted without thinking, allowing their 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 the artist always regretted how the colors didn’t stay themselves— how the exact point on the paper where the two colors mixed, turned grey.
The artist does not want to watercolor anymore, they do not want the colors they choose to mix into unknown colors that are not what they want. They have painted enough paintings to know what they want, and it is not a quick masterpiece.
The artist wants their next painting to be the project of their life. The painting that hangs in the studio forever welcoming changes, new colors, adaptations. They want to learn things about themself every day, come home to the studio, and transfer them to the canvas. They want the canvas to be so wide and tall that they never worry about taking up the entirety of it and finishing. They don’t want any pressure to have to choose their colors too quickly, sketch their draft before they know what it is they want it to be, draw in between those drafted lines, be unable to erase the charcoal for lack of an eraser.
The artist wants to slow down. They want their art studio to be theirs and to give the key to just one other. They want to give this key to someone who watches them paint and doesn’t want their painting to become theirs. So many times in life, others have quickly admired the artist’s masterpiece, hoping to be a muse, to become part of the painting. Hoping that one day when the artist has finally finished, it will have been them that was the artist’s inspiration. The artist doesn’t want this.
The artist wants their art studio to be theirs and only theirs. And to share it with someone who loves that about them. Someone who accepts the key to the studio and visits in admiration.
Someone who opens the door while the artist is painting and stands behind them watching.
Someone who puts a hand on the artist’s shoulder when their frustrated, when they can’t find the right color.
Someone who plays with the artist’s hair while they fiddle with the different types of shading.
Someone who sits next to the artist and listens to what it is they are saying, even though no words have been spoken.
The artist wants someone to enter their studio and walk around the museum of their mind without the unconscious critique of how they would have made a painting differently.
Someone who reads the placards and smiles at all of the things they didn’t know about the artist, laughs at all of the things learned, cries at the pain the artist kept to themselves.
The artist wants this because that is who they want to be for the other. 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 just 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 does not 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 artist’s 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 loop of a second. 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. And they will reflect on this only when it is 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.
The artist doesn’t want to think about the end, they have spent their whole life thinking about the end. The artist just wants to create art. 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 a particular 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.
The artist thinks another may one day steal their heart, but to steal something means it belongs to someone else, and the only person it belongs to is the artist. So the other will not steal it, but artist may gift it to them. 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,
the artist is thoughtfully in the present.
For that is all the artist can promise.