Unforgettable

I brought the dusty box down from the top shelf of my closet.  I packed it years ago when my sister and I closed up our parents’ home for the last time.  We saved, sold, donated, and discarded.  My mother’s assorted watercolor paints and papers remained.  Watercolor was the last in a long line of Mother’s creative interests and her paintings graced the homes of kith and kin. With her passing, no one (including me) was much interested in her copious art supplies. I couldn’t quite bear to part with them, although I had no idea how to use them.   My sister and I were busy with careers and overwhelmed with decisions. I would soon fly home to Maine. Into storage it all went.  Someday, I thought, someday.

Fast forward over a decade later. I relocated to Texas and gathered up the remaining items from the storage unit. It was time to delve into the box’s contents, which were now more intriguing to me given my recent ventures into watercolor and collage.  Inside I found dozens of brushes, artist-quality paper, tools, class notes, patterns—and her palette still filled with paint, carefully labeled in her perfect handwriting.  At the bottom of the box, a stack of unframed paintings waited.  My eyes no longer clouded by grief, I saw possibility.  That paint I had once seen as a souvenir only needed a few drops of water to flow again.  I grabbed an eyedropper filled with water and revived the paints with their luscious names: vermillion, cerulean blue, viridian, rose madder… I learned to use her legacy of paint and paper in my own work.  An idea began to germinate.  In a sense, Mother and I were already painting together.  Why not take it one more step and truly collaborate?  Was there a way to combine our work into something new?  I thought of that beautiful dual recording by Nat and Natalie King Cole, Unforgettable. Released years after Nat’s death, the two voices blended in perfect harmony, sharing an unforgettable connection across the years.  If Nat and Natalie could do it, why not us?  I pictured my mother’s beautiful smile and felt the creative spirit that never deserted her.  Somehow, I knew it would work.

My mother was a precise and realistic painter, eager to learn rules and master techniques. I lean toward an impressionistic, loose style.  Her work followed an exact plan, while I am comfortable mixing media and following impulse and mood.  Amid her supplies I found a painting of an orange poppy she had never quite completed. The colors were rather muted to my eyes and the image much too exact.  I began to overpaint it, to add texture and depth, to tweak the colors of the background.  A brighter more flowing flower emerged, one that reflected both our approaches while capturing a style all its own.  I hung it in my office and thus was born…Unforgettable. Just like the artistic collaboration of Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie that became a smash hit many years after Nat’s death, occasionally my mother and I still work together. There’s nothing ghostly or otherworldly about it.  From time to time, I go through her stack of paintings, and one of her images finds its way into my own work, enhancing it with extra detail or form. I’m sure she would welcome the changes that add an extra burst of color or a wild flourish. She’d be glad to see her paintings on a wall instead of gathering dust inside a box.

Connections need not be limited to physical presence, as our experience with the Holy Presence shows us each day.  Today, I am grateful for Connections, whenever and however they appear, not as ghosts or ethereal spirits, but as memories and traces of bright color that can bubble into life and usefulness once again.  The Unforgettable Spirit of Connection still paints our world.

Today’ tile combines a piece of an unfinished painting of my mother’s and my own additions, crafted into a calendar tile.  I used a branch from one of her tree studies and added moon, bird, and spattered background. Both our signatures are in the lower right corner.  I have more complex examples of our shared artwork, but this simple one captures our complementary, contrasting approaches to art and life.  A bird, a branch, a cloud-covered moon… an Unforgettable connection.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep.

           — Excerpt from Endymion by John Keats

As you view this tile, consider the Holy Connections that grace your life. 

An amazing performance of Unforgettable by Nat and Natalie King Cole is available on YouTube.