AS A CHILD, I SAW FACES in my Grandmother’s stuccoed ceilings and the grain of the wooden walls. I created constellations from the dots and whorls, invented heroes, and then wove stories for those heroes from the patterns that I saw.
Out of doors, those stories spilled into the sky to become shapes in the clouds or actual constellations in the sky. I could identify Orion and the Big Dipper, but a belt and a ladle did little to entrance me when I could weave sea serpents and river goddesses out of the pinpricks of light. I saw the world as a canvas, coloured in with ink dot paintings, and the world that I engaged with was more vibrant than the one inhabited by those around me.
The images were entrancing, at least in part because of their impermanence. I could never seem to find the same picture twice. So a section of stucco that looked like a wise man with a crooked beard became a crescent moon the next time I searched for him.
When I was very young and first saw the figures in the ceiling, I told my Grandmother about the stories I’d discovered. She chuckled and probed me for further elaboration. When I was done, if my story had been particularly compelling, she would erect an easel and give me one of her cheaper canvases to deface.
“Draw it,” she said. “The shapes and the lines.”
I would press too hard on the fabric. My pencil punctured the canvas as I futilely sought to recreate the masterpieces her ceiling contained.
“Paint it the way you just described,” she said after I described a forest with the faces of people. “Leaves like dry fingers, laced with yellow veins. Branches like withered arms. Bark like a weathered face. Paint your forest one tree at a time.” I grew too impatient. My brushstrokes sped up as I mangled my vision more and more. My hands were not dexterous enough to contain my imagination.
My Grandmother worked on her landscapes beside me, and when I looked over I seethed with jealousy at the golden ears of corn and the pretzel-thin telephone poles piercing a clear blue sky. My Grandmother’s paintings, so much more vivid than my memories of corn mazes and road trips.
Still, my Grandmother hung my childish ink splatters up around the house—on the walls with the most sunlight, the most visibility, the most exposure. She tucked her own paintings into stairwells, hung them up behind doors. When she decided that her walls were too cluttered, she stored her paintings behind the sofa, while mine basked in the places of pride.
I remember the disappointment in my Grandmother’s eyes the day that I told her I was done with painting. I hated the oily paints and the rough canvas, preferred my intangible imagination instead. So I stared up at her stuccoed ceiling and escaped the confines of her country home, while she lay coughing in the next room.
Eventually I lost that skill. The last time I tried, I lay in bed and hunted through the grainy patterns, but no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find any answers above.