The Artist's Studio

This is a few years old, but i like it. I think it's one of my better essays, so i thought i would post it.




The Artist's Studio

My father's studio is small, but at least it is in the house. He used to threaten to put a studio in the garage, and I was always worried that he would get cold out there in the dilapidated barn that we used for storing shovels and rakes. The barn has a dirt floor and a terrible infestation of spider crickets—not a place I wanted my father to be spending his time. So I was glad when he finally was able to have a real studio to paint in, and it was inside the house.

The studio used to be my bedroom that I shared with my older sister, and later it became the bedroom shared by my younger brother and sister. We only had three bedrooms, and with six people in the family, there had to be a lot of sharing of rooms. But when people started growing up and moving out, my father finally had a room to use for a studio. He had waited fifty-five years to have a real artist's studio—I am so glad he finally has one.

The studio smells of oil paint and turpentine, the fragrances of my youth. When I was younger he had to paint in his bedroom, and I remember creeping in at night to watch him, listening to the classical music he always had playing. I felt so peaceful, watching him paint, smelling the mysterious smells of an artist.

There is still an air of mystery about my father's work, possibly because I inherited exactly none of his talent. I am fascinated by the huge books in the studio—books called The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques and The Drawings of Albrecht Durer. There are boxes and jars filled with old and new tubes of paint, with names like Cerulean Blue Hue, Cobalt Violet, and Cadmium-Barium Orange. He has what seems to be thousands of brushes, and I think he actually uses all of them. There are scrapers and mixers and pastels and colored pencils, all tools of his trade. What is truly amazing is how he takes these things and creates pictures of lemons and haystacks and wineglasses. How do you use paint, a thing of color, to create something like a clear wineglass that has no color?

This is the mystery of my father's art.

I have been sleeping in the studio this last week because I had to give up my bedroom to my sister and her husband who are here visiting from Michigan. There is a small twin bed in the studio that is normally reserved for guests, but this week, I get to be the guest, and dream in colors of Cerulean Blue and Cobalt Violet, breathing in the smell of turpentine.