Painting My Way Back Home

It isn’t over yet. And when it is, I will miss it.

My arm is sore today from painting my hallway yesterday. It is now a pale bright bluey-green. And one coat away from being finished. The process of painting has been calming: to watch the foam brush loaded with a color I love—in a sexy goopy form. In this case, painting is progress. And I have taken it so slowly, which has given me immense pleasure.

First, I patched holes in the wall and sanded. Don’t ask why the holes were there, or never patched. Some days all I did was get up on a chair and sand a section of the wall smaller than an iPhone 6. But I worked hard and stretched and strained my fingers to the absolute maximum. Then, I got down from the chair, washed my hands, and returned to sitting.

I also painted the ceiling.

This pandemic has provoked every emotion and like ghosts or aromas they come in amorphous waves sometimes overlapping and creating new and unfamiliar feelings. Also, old feelings come back again. Like looking at yourself in the mirror for the first time in many years.

Paint dripped on my painting pants, making them into a little bit more of what they truly are. Paint filled the dingy neglected wall surface like a viscous version of “it’s going to be okay”. I forgot for a few minutes. I remembered.

I have never been to the Tenement Museum because I imagine they will take me on a tour of what looks like my own apartment. The other day I reassured my Mother that if I fell off the chair while painting, my hallway is so narrow - it would catch me in its pre-war wood trimmed arms. I never fell.

My kitchen is orange and now the adjoining hallway is this pale green. These colors vibrate beside each other. They create light and shadow beyond the actual light and shadow. I had a painting teacher once who told us that yellow beside light blue “makes light”. This has always stuck with me. I know painting my apartment is not the same thing as painting a painting—but here, I blurred the lines between inside and art.

The hallway has transcended its original form, it’s now closer to the gods, it sings, it downright glows. But really, it’s just better. Which reminds me. I like to paint.

Update see below: Fin