Painting of a Tree.  1969.

 

Sometimes you thank yourself for not trashing an item in your junk drawer, as was the case with this painting of a tree that I made when I was four years old.        

One day in kindergarten our teacher asked us to make a paper fire truck.  She supplied each of us with a red paper cut-out of the chassis and our job was to cut and paste other elements of the truck onto it.  When I finished mine, I had rubber-cemented the wheels to the roof, the siren to the water hose and crayoned the driver to the underside of the truck.  Doubting that my intentions were to show-off my abilities as an abstract artist, the teacher spent much time explaining to me why what I had done was incorrect.  So I tried another one.  The results were no better.  

Later that week, many of the children had their fire trucks exhibited in the glass casements that lined the hallways of the school.  Others had their’s displayed at home on refrigerator doors and elsewhere.  I kept mine in a closet in my bedroom where I was ashamed to have it seen.  My mother, knowing that I had been troubled by this, sat me down at our kitchen table and asked me to make a painting of a tree.  I’m sure she had chosen a tree because she knew it was one of the easiest things to render and that whatever I painted would at least look somewhat skillful.  It is this tree that I painted for her and it was soon hung in a prominent place in our kitchen where it remained for the next twenty-five years.  I owe any confidence that I may possess in this lifetime to this one act of motherly love.  A second image, depicting an unknown 19th century woman, was found underneath the tree painting.  As it was my mother who had framed the painting, she couldn’t have known that I would ever see what was hidden behind it.  It stands as a testament of a mother’s love for her (artistically challenged) son.