LEARNING TO SEE

Drawing was one of my favorite things in kindergarten. I even loved experimenting with colors and materials. Even if the kindergarten staff often disciplined me for what I didn't understand because I thought my creations were great. I loved the fact that I can use paper and paint to invent anything I want. So if I needed a clock I would draw one, if I needed a board game I would draw one.

 

My mother always loved art, especially realistic paintings. When she saw something she liked, she pointed it out and said, "Wow, look how nice that is."

In my early childhood I didn't see her expressing the same kind of astonishment with my artwork, so I didn't think that what I created was particularly good. And even if I loved to create and paint, I didn't invest much in this preference.

 

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Just draw what you see

A milestone in my life was when I was about ten years old. My sister has always been a great painter, in any style in which she likes to experiment. She herself drew a lot more than I did in her childhood and eventually became a very good architect. One day I visited her and asked her to teach me to paint with watercolor. I remember that she sat me down in front of a dark, shiny ceramic vase at the kitchen table and gave me a pencil and paper. Then she said, "Okay, just draw what you see."

It sounded simple to me, but it was anything but easy. I remember watching this vase for fifteen minutes trying to figure out what I see while my sister was doing laundry or something. I thought the only thing I can see is the outline and that this vase was dark. I just couldn't get the transfer from a 3D live object to a 3D looking 2D format. So I finally gave up. (I don't remember if I ever put a line on the paper because somehow I was ashamed not to be able to just do what I was told.)

 

"Ok, so let's try something different." My sister took a postcard with yellow, sunflower-like flowers. She started mixing the colors on the palette and describing what she saw. She explained to me how to leave out reflections where I see them and how to put on a darker layer where I see the shadows. After making some leaves, she gave me the brush and I continued the picture. The flower became beautiful which encouraged me a lot.

 

From that day on, I don't even know how, I could just paint with watercolor everything I liked. I think I just learned to see that day.

When looking at my pictures, the layman might think I am skilled or practiced, but frankly, practicing has never been my thing, which is why I never did it great. I mean, of course, every picture you finish was an exercise in the end, but it's still something different than doing a lot of studies and actively working on your skills to improve your skills. In addition, I have not had a long history of "completed images" so far.

 

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Perfect or not at all

Whatever. Over time, a few things came to the surface that were hidden somewhere in my soul. I wasn't really aware that perfectionism had crept in.

Another experience what hit this notch was when my mother once showed her enthusiasm for this child prodigy. This child painted everything from her thoughts, from her imagination, and that in a perfect way, with lots of details and anatomical correctness, even since her early childhood. From then on I was completely convinced that what I do is not really art and is simply nothing special. All I do is just copying what I see. Everyone can do so, I thought, because after all I never learned it myself. Remember, after the “sunflower experience”, I finally just did it. I can't paint something super realistic from my mind. But that's exactly what I thought a "real artist" does. In the end, with the exception of a few exceptional cases, I finally stopped painting for years.

 

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Missions in the dirt

In 2017/2018 my husband Denis and I went to Mozambique for the missions and attended a school there. This school brought in various missionaries every week. By default, they sent these guest speakers home with a guest gift. They have been doing this for about 25 years. This year a new idea came up.

A staff member came up to all of us one afternoon and asked if anyone of us could paint prophetically. It was about someone painting a prophetic painting that they could give to the guest speaker as a gift. Even before the request was made, my husband jumped up from the chair and said, "Here, my wife, she definitely can." I honestly wanted to run away and hide somewhere. He kept repeating himself and so she finally asked me: "Are you willing to paint, we'll give you color and everything."

In my head I heard myself saying: "I didn't come to Africa to paint, I'm here for missions, something super important, not to paint!", but I said: "Yes, of course, I like doing it " while I looked at my husband with this " what did you ride me into " face.

I didn't know that while I was so busy with all-important missionary work among the poorest of the poor, God was on an important mission, too - it was about my heart.

 

I got all the materials a few hours later. I was shocked. The canvas was painted with lacquer. How can I paint on it with water-based acrylics? The paint tubes were old and partly dried up. I lacked the basic colors that I would normally paint with and of all the brushes they gave me, only one was reasonably in such a state that I did not have to fear that he would lose all of his hair when painting.

Next problem, I had no idea what to paint and I also had no internet to look for references, anything so I could paint as usual.

So this time it was just me, bad materials, a few hours of sunlight - since it was setting early - my imagination and God.

 

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It looks different than my Imaginations

It was Friday that day and I had until Monday. On Sunday I still found myself without an idea. On the way to church I spoke to a friend of mine who was also supposed to paint a picture for another guest speaker. I asked her if she already had an idea. She said: "Yes, I will paint it this way and that ... and there it will be ... and he will ride on his back ... and the background may stay that way ... what do you have?"

"Well, I saw ... a splash of red ... across the picture ... and there was ... um ... darker color in the background."

This was not my comfort zone at all and I had to deal with all possible facets of perfectionism in me.

Then during the sermon and during worship something amazing happened. I closed my eyes and all sorts of details suddenly appeared in my head next to the red splash and the darker color. After the sermon I got a complete picture and was ready to go.

I finished the picture in 3 hours in daylight and added the scripture from the sermon on the back of the painting. I was not yet completely convinced of my result, as I saw the colors in my head shining brighter, which could not be changed because my color palette was determined by the colors they gave me. That and all the other “bad things” made me feel limited and that I couldn't fully express what I saw. The lacquer finish on the canvas also let the paint run together, as if you were trying to paint on a glass surface. So I was satisfied that at least I had a result that had anything to do with what was in my heart. Still, I was grateful that this "task" was now over.

 

The next day I was amazed who this painting was for. It was exactly for this preacher who shared a word on Sunday and on whose word I got all the details for the picture. Funny enough his name is Pastor Surprise.

 

Taking a deep breath in the afternoon. That afternoon the staff member came back to thank me and by the way: “Can you do one more for one of the next guest speakers? This time someone wrote a prophetic word and you could paint something accordingly, something that goes with it. ”

I couldn't oppose that, so I agreed, but I asked them not to paint the canvas with lacquer. Here I was now. All over again. Not that that was enough, she came back to me for four weeks in a row.

 

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He breaths His life into

God really seemed to want to break the perfectionism in me. During this time and all the time we were there in the "ministry of missions", God worked a lot on me and formed me into a vessel that was ready to be filled by him and poured out again according to his will. I came to the understanding that he gave me the artistic skills and that these are actually nothing special. Your heard me right. Nothing special in comparison, because He does not compare. Not special but unique and it belongs to me like my eye color and my fingerprint. I realized how much this is fought from every direction, even since childhood, as my story shows here. During that time there, He opened my mind and imagination. I started to see so much in the spirit, especially during worship, prayer and during the musical units. I learned how to capture an imaginary of picture passing by my mind, to look at it longer and to grasp the details, to ultimately literally step in and to experience what I see.

 

One profound thing that really made perfectionism crumble was that He told me a parable like Jesus used to do. He explained to me that it does not matter if He asks one of his “vessels” to paint a little girl on a swing, for example, whether the painting is ultimately super realistic or whether it was painted in the shape of a stick figure. The important part is that He speaks to whoever looks at it through the image. My job is to get what I see on the canvas and not try to make it perfect. Because I don't know the mind or history of those people who are going to look at it. I don't paint for people. God will add the important details to the viewer, making the picture living, just as life came into the molded body of clay through His breath.

 

So now I'm sitting here, still fighting against perfectionism. Perfectionism speaks and says I don't have enough pictures to fill these pages, I don't have enough skills to have the right to write and speak about all of this. Perfectionism speaks and says I should wait a few more years until I know what I am doing, until I have references and people speak well about me and when I have a title.

What you see and will see here is how I do the opposite of what perfectionism wants from me. Not just the opposite, but what the potter asks me to do, what he shaped me for. Because its designed form decides on the respective use, on my use, not the form into which perfectionism, the world or religion wants to press me in.