The Best Mentor of All

The whole idea of going outside to paint really appeals to me. I love being outside. I love painting. I love all the beauty we have around us. So going outside to paint the beauty I see and wallow in the gratefulness of it all, just like a pig in mud, is a win/win for me.

Well, in my head it is. Until I actually get out there and nothing goes according to the plan in my head. The ‘plan’ has me admiring the beauty, pulling out my brushes and PERFECTLY portraying onto canvas what I see before me. What could ever go wrong with that plan?! Yeah, I know… pretty silly, but sometimes we can be like that until we take the time to think something through. I, obviously, had yet to think…

I was out there all Keen and ready to paint the majesty of the mountains. Sun was shining. Sky was blue. Snow was sitting perfectly atop those peaks in front of me. And then it just went pear-shaped… totally bottomed out! I was basically pretty annoyed. I had watched the tutorials. Due diligence was done. And yet, here I was with nothing going right. Basic mountain form was wrong. Colours would not disappear into the background so no distance was happening. Wind got quite intense and kept blowing my whole easel over. Sun moved… what’s with that!… so suddenly I was working in the bright light instead of the shadows. Argh!!!!

What made my annoyance worse was that this was not the first time I had painted these mountains. I had tried not too long ago and that was an even worse failure. All my dreams of plein air painting the beauty of New Zealand seemed dashed and shredded as my two attempts sat and mocked me.

There must be some lessons I had missed. Some trick that would set it to right. So I called up my very patient mentor and asked for a session. Let’s learn from the masters, right? ‘ Sure, come on over,’ he said, and then patiently listened while I showed my failures and grumbled miserably perplexed as to why I had not been able to achieve the visions in my head.

He started my lesson by taking me to visit another artist who has given up everything to follow her dream and paint. They sold the big house and gorgeous gardens and have built instead, a minimalist house with garden to match. Total easy care. And all because she realises that there are only 24 hours in a day and has decided to commit hers to an oft forgotten love of painting. That’s dedication. She is also incredibly detailed in her work spending literally hundreds of hours working on one painting, whereas, I have my suspicions that my mentor knows I get impatient with anything more than thirty… max! Hhmmm…

Back at his studio he pulled out his portfolio and we began looking through it for all paintings with mountains in it. This guy has been painting for close to seventy years (longer than I have been on the planet), so, he has countless paintings… I literally did loose count… just of mountain and landscapes. I searched them trying to find the keys I was missing. I took photos to take home and study. Then he pulled out a REALLY cheap canvas, the WORST brushes I have ever seen and squeezed out the final remnants of some OLD paint tubes. Not quite what one would expect to create a masterpiece with, but, right there in front of me, despite the Parkinsons shaking his body, he did just that. He created an awesome painting in less than an hour of the very mountains I had tried TWICE to capture.

I left feeling quite deflated. No fault of my mentor, but I had been looking for the rules, the quick-fix. Follow this 1,2,3, and you’ll have it. Instead he had shown me that, like life, although there are rules we would do well to follow, it’s actually in the doing that we find the relationship we hunger for. I hunger for success in my painting, yet the only way to have that success is to go paint again and again and again. When I told Father my complaints, He reminded me that He had never told me to paint a masterpiece, but, rather, to just come paint with Him each day. He knows that I don’t have seventy years to paint and perfect my craft. He knows that I am not so patient as some.

He also knows that relationship with Him is what it’s really all about. I get to go again and again and again to sit with Him in the great big beautiful outdoors and concentrate hard absorbing all the details I can of the wonderful world He has created. As I change my perspective from my inward perfectionism to His abundant goodness I realise that my heart is filled with gratitude. How awesome to be asked by God to come sit with Him and ‘take notes’ on His creativity. He really is the best mentor of all!