My mom just asked if I could "paint something nice" for her friend's living room and I don't know why it made me so mad
I love my mom so much, she's my biggest cheerleader, she framed my first shitty little landscape and hung it in the kitchen for years. But she called me today and was like "oh my friend Linda just bought this beige couch and I told her you could paint her something nice to go over it, nothing too weird, you know, something with flowers maybe?"
And I just. Stood there holding my phone. Because first of all I haven't painted a floral in two years and I don't want to and second of all the thing I'm actually working on right now is this huge moody piece of my partner's back in low grey light and it's the best thing I've ever done and nobody in my family has seen it because they don't really look at my work they just want me to make things that match their beige couch.
I said "I'll think about it" and I won't and now I feel guilty and also annoyed and also like a snob. Why is it so hard for people to understand that "you're so talented, you should paint me something!" is not actually a compliment?? It's like being asked to write a poem for someone's birthday party theme. I don't paint beige couch flowers Linda I'm sorry.
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Oh I felt this in my BONES.
My mom once asked if I could paint something "calm" for her dentist's waiting room. I was in the middle of a series about grief and she knew that.
It's not ingratitude. It's the gap between what they see when they look at us and what we're actually doing. She sees her kid who makes pretty things. You're in the trenches making something real and vulnerable and TRUE. And she's like "flowers for beige couch" and it just... reduces everything you're pouring yourself into to decoration.
She loves you. She doesn't get it. Both things can be true and it can still sting like hell.
What's the piece of your partner's back saying? If you wanna talk about it I'd genuinely love to hear. That sounds like the kind of painting that matters.
oh man, the dentist's waiting room! that's almost worse somehow?? like she was volunteering you for the ultimate beige-neutral background noise art. and the fact that she knew you were working on grief pieces... oof.
you're right though, it's exactly that gap. she sees the daughter who makes nice things and she's proud of that and wants to show me off and i love her for wanting to show me off. but the piece i'm actually excited about right now is this really fragile grey-blue thing and i can't explain to her why painting a peony for linda's couch would feel like a betrayal of it. she'd look at me like i'm being dramatic because to her it's just... paint, you know?
but it's not just paint. anyway thank you for getting it, genuinely. how did you handle the dentist situation?
Jesus, the dentist waiting room. That's a whole other level. Your mam's out there marketing you as ambient noise.
But look, you're dead right about the gap. My own mother, God love her, she's proud as punch of me, has my prints up all over the house, tells everyone she meets about her son the artist. And I'm grateful, genuinely. But she still asks me now and again if I've "any of the nice ones" for the church raffle. Sure the prints she's talking about are from 2018. I'm carving this thing at the moment that's a hare with its ribs showing, tangled in something you can't quite make out, and she's looking for a nice little robin for the vicar's wife.
It's not malice. It's not even that they don't believe in what we're doing. It's that they see the version of us that fits into their world, the version that makes things that slot neatly into other people's houses. And the version we're trying to be, the one doing the weird, honest, difficult work, that one just doesn't exist in their picture yet. And maybe it stings because some small part of you wonders if they're right, if you're being pretentious or difficult for no reason. But you're not. You're just trying to make the thing that needs making.
Anyway. Solidarity from across the water. Keep making the gloomy back portraits. The beige couches of this world can wait.