I toured the working studio of Nanaimo artist Carole Reid one day. An easel stood in the corner. Unusual tools and creations in process filled the work surfaces. Finished art, sketches and project ideas decorated the walls.
Paint is only one of Carole’s mediums. She makes paper. She carves lino. She collects odd things and assembles collages.
Noticing a strange box of early twentieth century corsets and bloomers, I picked up a ghastly rubber girdle lurking at the bottom. Pink. “Ugh! What will you do with this?”
She laughed. “Isn’t that horrid? Imagine wearing that to dinner! I don’t know what I’ll do with it. I’ll find something.”
Some of Carole’s art puzzles me. If I saw it at a gallery I may be tempted to shrug and walk on by. But I have an advantage: Carole is an old friend. When I ask questions about her work, she explains. Those odd sculptures of weathered fence boards? They represent the sexes, she told me, and our disparate preening habits. They won awards, those two.
Every artist, visual or otherwise, creates to communicate. To make a statement, tell a story, ask a question. They have something to say and express it in myriad mediums.
Artists specialize in the intangible – the responses their works create in those who experience them. But they use the tangible to create. With finite things, they gamble on the infinite. Even artists with limited resources can offer incomparable richness. And within the framework of time, artists strive to suspend eternity. The works of those who come nearest to succeeding are prized and protected long after their makers have stopped creating.
On another day, I visited another gallery, hung with paintings by the great Impressionists Degas, Monet, Renoir and Cezanne. Visitors wandered, lingering. Gallery stewards stood watchful to chide those who came too close.
I stared long at a Monet painting. Standing an arms length away, using my pen as a pointer, I traced the outline of one of its components in the air, trying to find the boats in the fog. Why, where... how?
A guard stomped over. Nearly knocked the pen from my hand. “NO, you mustn’t do that!” he exploded. Properly chastised, I retreated.
I’ve since thought about the difference between how I see the works of Monet and those of my friend. Carole eagerly explains her work to me. Monet is a puzzle. Distant, unreachable, fiercely guarded by those who think they know him best.
God, the Divine Artist, communicates too. In every brush of his hand across creation he writes love. In every newborn he stamps his own image. In his Son, Jesus, he has imprinted his own character. And through the ages, his friends have understood his message and rejoiced. But sometimes, zealous to protect, we believers chase others away. Those who, seeking to understand, have dared to come close and ask honest questions.
If you’ve been chased away, forgive us. And know this: the Artist himself invites you nearer. And he turns no questions down.
