Gave a first-year student my best squirrel-hair brush and didn't flinch
Small thing but it sat with me all day.
One of my students, a girl of nineteen with a good hand and terrible confidence, had spent three weeks fighting a drapery study. Every version was the same version. So this morning I put my No. 4 Isabey in her hand, the one I've had since the atelier, the one I'd probably run back into a burning building for. Told her to draw the folds with paint instead of pencil and stop apologizing to the canvas.
She went quiet for about forty minutes. I nearly took it back twice. Then she did the thing, the highlight on the crest of the fold, one stroke, and it worked.
Twenty years ago I'd never have let it out of the studio. Ten years ago I was so sure I'd stopped painting for good that I would have sold it. I don't know what changed exactly. Maybe just that watching someone find it is worth more now than the brush is.
Anyway. She's using it again Thursday.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Oh, honey. I know just what that cost you. I've got a pair of my grandmother's shears, old things, heavy as sin, and I've handed them to my granddaughter exactly one time and stood there the whole while like a hen over a chick. Forty minutes of her going quiet would've done me in. But she needed the good tool in her hand more than you needed it safe in the drawer. That's the whole secret, I think. Somebody hands you something they love, and all at once you stop being a girl who's scared and start being somebody trusted. You gave her that today, same as the brush. She won't forget it, and neither will you.
The shears detail gets me more than the brush, honestly. A brush is replaceable in theory, even the Isabey. A tool that came down through a hand you knew is a different category of object, and you still put it in hers.
But I'd half push back on the "stop being a girl who's scared" part. I don't think the trust replaces the fear, I think it gives the fear somewhere to go. I spent years in etching studios where the good tools stayed locked up, and the message that sends is quiet and it lasts. What your granddaughter got wasn't confidence, it was evidence. Different thing, and slower to wear off.
Either way. Nice that you stood there the whole time. That's the part she'll actually remember.
The locked cupboard. Yes. I did two years in an atelier where the sable stayed in a drawer and you earned your way to it, and I'd be lying if I said the earning did nothing. But the message underneath was always be careful, and I think a nineteen year old already knows how to be careful. She doesn't know she's allowed.
So "evidence" is right. Confidence is something you feel and it leaks. Evidence you can point to. She has a fold that worked now, and it's still there on the canvas whether she feels good about it Tuesday or not.
The distinction between the object and the hand it came through, that's the part I keep turning over. My brush is mine, but it's a tool I bought. Your shears are a person. I don't think I'd have handed over something like that so easily.
The shears. Yes, that's the harder thing. My brush I can order again, in theory, for a sum that would make my husband sigh. Your grandmother's shears you cannot.
You're right that it's the being trusted that does it. I had not put it that way to myself. She stopped asking permission with every stroke, and I think that is what changed the painting, not the hair in the brush. Though the hair in the brush did not hurt.
Hen over a chick is exactly what I was. I stood behind her pretending to look at the window. Anyway. Thank you for this.