(posted on behalf of Annette McLeod)
I don’t remember when it started – it seems to have been some time ago.
I’ve shared it with no one. It’s not a secret that I think ridiculous, I don’t, it’s more to do with the lack of opportunity.
Sharing something like this could result in people thinking I’m a bit odd and its not a subject I feel I can just blurt out in the middle of surface conversations.
I haven’t even told Stan. It’s personal to me, like I imagine things are personal to him, even after 38 years of married life. I see it really as keeping the boat afloat, you know allowing it to list this way and that on strange tides without a big storm blowing up and capsizing it.
No, I think I’m right to stay "mum" on this one.
Not that I’ve ever been a mum – we’ve never had children and never had tests or asked why.
Have you seen those people on television telling the world about longing for a baby and not being able to have one. I’ve had to wonder if there’s something missing in me because I’ve never felt like that. I can’t say we’ve ever discussed it between us – a bit like a page missing in a book, but not spoiling the story.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have enjoyed children. I’m pretty good at taking care of things and creating a solid home. We’ve never been short of money, had decent holidays, always had a nice car each, and I’ve never worked so we would have been well placed to bring up children.
Still my women’s institute and meals on wheels keep me involved.
Today I did "my secret thing". I never know when the mood will take me but when it does, I act. I blame the wooden floors we’ve had put down; they make it so easy to move furniture. I call it my artistic hobby because its as regular as a hobby and it involves painting, which I consider artistic.
At the back of the wardrobe is my favourite place but I have been known, on warm days to do it behind the shed in broad daylight.
The colours are bold and the pieces are in big blocks. Somehow being hidden gives me a sense of privacy and freedom. So I slosh away in broad strokes, arcing lines that curve and circle each other, bleeding into each other sometimes where runs cascade and overlap. I call this freefall or escape. Sometimes the bleeds create new striking colours and patterns and I’ve even painted fine lines between the runs symbolising varying pathways and connections.
It makes no sense, has no real structure but when I’m there in full flow as it were, I love it. I sing a bit and talk out loud to myself and recently I’ve taken a ladder upstairs so that I can reach higher and get longer runs and work on a bigger piece of wall.
I’ve started calling into B&Q and paint warehouses buying up tester pots of odourless emulsion then driving home like an excited child rushing to catch traffic lights. I almost abandon my car on the drive, rush through the door, throw my coat across the back of the chair, kick off my shoes and race upstairs pulling at my clothes as I go. The bags of goodies land on the bed, as I strip off and then, with exquisite slowness, I unravel my set of red thermal underwear and begin to ease into the soft finely woven fabric.
Don’t ask me why but wearing those close fitted leggings and top with long tube like sleeves adds to my sense of being an artist. Its like adding my second skin that allows me to become someone else. There’s something luxurious about something so soft, weightless, yet giving such comfort and warmth. I feel theatrical, dramatic even. I stand in front of the floor to ceiling mirrors and mimic mimes that I remember from childhood. I can feel the warm pipes under the wooden floor and I slide my bare feet from side to side throwing my arms wide, balancing on one leg and trying to do the tree of life pose. I stretch, glide around and pirouette. I walk in exaggerated strides like a prima Donna ballerina to the right hand side of the wardrobe and in one movement pull it forward. I then navigate the gap and push the left hand side so that I have enough space to manoeuvre. I turn and I stare and stare at the wall, all the time peeling the plastic strips from the new tester pots.
I place them in a neat line and retrieve the dust sheets from inside the wardrobe. I lay these carefully along the floor and up to the edge of the skirting board. Once in place, I sit down and begin to take the lids from the new pots. Today I had saffron, ochre, burnished gold, Egyptian sand, deep turquoise and an azure blue. It’s utterly thrilling to look into these pots – I almost slaver over them.
To suspend the moment of brush touching paint and paint touching wall I walk the length of our bedroom, opening the small windows to ventilate the room, and flick on the CD player. As the music starts I glide with arms outstretched and slip slide across the room, circling, rising and falling in time with the music. Some Honky Tonk Woman I think, they don’t all live in gin bars in Memphis Mick! I laugh out loud and say you’re nearly in the zone girl and then I laugh again. As I catch my reflection in the mirror I see a happy woman, stretching and releasing her energy. I smile.
To paint I say out loud, stop prancing about. With more exaggerated strides and a shimmy thrown in, I reach the back of the wardrobe and I stare.
Its good I say out loud, all of it, its good. I laugh and reach for the first pot.
Burnished gold, it looks every bit as fabulously rich as I had imagined. I take my smallest brush and carefully etch the edge of the red block. The shape comes alive, the red takes on a warmer hue and I feel like a master craftsman creating something significant.
I put down my pot and brush and step back. Its even more beautiful than I thought possible and I find myself stroking the soft fabric of my thermal top.
I don’t understand why I am so comforted or at such peace. Everything is perfect, in harmony, soft edged yet brilliant too. As I stare I begin to weep. I don’t try to stop the tears which run untamed off my chin and on to my top where they get absorbed and warmed in the fine weave. I sit on the floor facing the wall and my second skin stretches and eases itself into position. It’s a moment of being totally at one with myself, my body, my world.
Then I notice something I’ve never seen before. In the distance of the painting the landscape is undefined, flat, neutral, open somehow, waiting for colour to be added.
The foreground is dominated by two columns that stand apart but are equal in size, shape and even structure. The colours that radiate from them are very much opposites.
The one on the left is predominantly dark, flecked with odd flashes of colour, brooding almost with strange angles shooting off here and there, in a randomness that almost breaks up the column but at the same time defines it.
The other is bright solid red, shot through with ripples and runs of yellow, peach, vanilla, now etched in burnished gold. Its stands comfortably next to the darkly oppressive column and adds relief and light with an almost edible feel to it.
Between the two columns is some cross over colour almost like fireworks have ricocheted between the two and pock marked both with small gashes. This is where I stand, masked in my red thermals, sucked into the picture.
I saw it then as I stared at the reflection in the mirror across the room. It was a complicated scene where some of it worked beautifully together and other areas didn’t blend. There was little chaos but much detail.
There was struggle somehow in some of the scenes but what emerged and stood out were the columns with a slight distance between them.
I began to move the wardrobe over to the other side of our room, to expose the wall. Tonight I would show Stan. Tonight under my normal clothes I would wear my thermal underwear.
I wonder whether I should go out and buy him a set of black thermal underwear! Its not a bad thought and I laugh and laugh at the innocence of youth.
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