The Waterfall

by Sarah Griffin Thibodeaux

Artists! Are you up on your inventory?  Do you keep every piece in your software?

What about that painting you did last summer? Are you sure it’s in there?

I’ve been thinking about inventory. It sounds so dull. Boring.

But keeping inventory is a practice you should keep as part of your artistic practice. 

And maybe you’re not ready to show your work yet, or maybe you think it’s just another study or practice piece.

But what if it’s not.

Today I went looking for a painting I did two summers ago—to show as an example of a kind of painting I can do as a commission.  And I realize now it’s not in my online software.

I haven’t added it.

I’m curious about why I never added it. 

It’s a lovely painting. It’s of my son lounging about on a sofa reading a book, and I elongated his figure like an El Greco. Not sure why I made him so long but voila. There is is. It works in the composition, I guess.

But hey, looking at my inventory makes me find pieces I forgot I even made. 

One in particular stops me. 

The waterfall.

I painted it in the year 2009 or maybe 2010. I remember hiking to a spot to see a waterfall. It was a trek. I carried my Julian box easel up a hill. It was cold.

I wanted this one to be great. I had come all this way. I wanted to brightness of the water. The gentle cascade of the stream over the gray rocks. 

I wanted each turn of rock, each time the land stopped the water, made it change course, to be firm, strong. 

I wanted the feel of strong to soft to twisting and turning.

I painted for the time I had. Was it an hour? Two hours?

My husband was waiting. 

My hands were cold.

I stopped. 

I took my painting to the car.

It wasn’t quite.

It didn’t have the perfect edges.  The poetic flow.  It fell short.

It was . . .  ok, I guess? I don’t know. It was, um, not a triumph.

It was hard.

Yeesh, this landscape painting thing is not for the faint of heart.

I took the painting back to the apartment. Felt a deep shame rush over me. Covering me, enveloping me. It was bad. 

I was not. good. enough.

I put it away. Maybe? It never made my web site. Never made it into public view. 

Destroyed.

Never made it back to New Orleans, back to the inventory. To the studio I would build three years later. It was a goner.

Now I look at in fifteen years later. Think it’s not half bad. I love the strong white, the sheer power of the water deep in the break of the tree cover.

It is good.

So what is this force that overcame me? That made me hide out for another decade and a half. 

Art shame.  

It comes and goes like a rainstorm. Some days I’m sunny and feeling great and then a few off choices in my values and edges turn me down to the dumps. 

Hurts so hard it’s hard to start again. 

I felt it yesterday. 

I painted till it hurt. Till I felt like quitting. it. all. Going to bed.

But let’s look at this demon. This particular form of self sabotage. What? Why? Who? How? 

What is this???

So now this is my intention. When I hit the shame, I expose it to the light of day. Shed some light on it.  Interrogate it with my words. 

The painting is just what it is. Nothing less. Nothing more. It cannot hurt.

Only I can hurt. My. Self.

So, rest. 

Break.

Rest.

Then wake.

Then look.

Then start again.

Today I wake and yesterday’s painting is okay. 

Workable. 

Salvageable. 

Today is a new day. 

Today my intention is to let it be. 

Let it be what it is. 

Let it show. 

Let it reveal itself. 

And go on.