A real artist

Beyond stocking up on good reads, preparing for the trek also involves making the rounds to say goodbye. I went to visit my painter friend today and check out the new work he has been producing. He is preparing for a trip to Gabon and was eager to talk about his project.

I caught a taxi pretty quickly just outside the gates and then spent a few long minutes in Kintambo mustering all my resistance to stay focused.(One singer for Zando with a particularly deep and melodious voice almost drew me in and swept me off to an entirely different part of the city.) A few soothing taxi rides and a long walk led me to the door of his workshop. He proudly showed me his drying paintings- beautiful homages to departing teachers from the Belgian school. What an amazing gift from the school.  I snapped another bad phone photo of a painting in progress thinking our school might try something like that. It is traditional for schools to give a gift to teachers whose contracts have finished and Aicha works their image into an original piece of art to forever immortalize their stay in Congo.

A teacher (and her parrot) amidst symbols of the school and country

I am always impressed with the amount of work Aicha turns out. He is like a painting machine. When I picked him up for the Gala exhibit at our school last month, he loaded several wet works into the car along with 6 or 7 dry pieces. He is always admonishing me to get busy so we can exhibit together. With only a week or so before that particular exhibit, he seemed to think I could create enough work in time to make it a duet.

Others have had a similar thought about my artwork. "Paint a lot and we can find a place to show (read- sell) it." I've tried explaining that for me, creating is more like childbirth. Long, laborious, painful yet satisfying. It takes so much of my energy and leaves me spent and exhausted. The thought of painting often conjures up resistance. Agony. I'm not even sure why I do it. Simply, because I can't NOT do it. I am compelled. But it has always been more therapeutic in nature. I give most of my work away as soon as it's finished- unable to bear looking at my expelled emotions.

So when Aicha asked me how my work was coming along on the canvas frames he had recently supplied me with ( remember this post....the price has been considerably lowered since our friendship has deepened) I set about explaining again the psychology behind my art. I'd just come from days immersed in a portrait painting which I then walked 7 kilometers to deliver in the name of purging myself from some devilish emotions. It seems to have worked pretty well.

But Aicha began to counsel me on the value of not giving everything away and presenting these raw emotions for the world to share. Yeah. "I do have something underway that isn't so traumatic," I informed him. "But that particular piece really needed to be far from me."

I guess that's the main difference between a painter for profit and art therapy. I think with practice I might evolve. But I am not really sure I want to.