The rag I wipe my hands on is older than my relationship and I won't wash it
I have this rag I wipe pastel dust off my fingers with. It used to be a t-shirt I wore in my office job, before I quit. Every portrait I've ever done has left a bit of itself on it, layers of pigment so thick in places it's more like a painting than a rag. My partner keeps offering to throw it in the wash and I keep saying no, and I can't really explain why. It's not sentimental, it's not like I hold onto a shirt for the memories. It's just that the color buildup is a record. I can look at it and see the last two years of faces, all smeared together into one brownish mess that's somehow more honest than the finished pieces.
Today I held it up to the light and there was a patch of that exact pink I mixed eleven times for one portrait and never got right. The rag got it in the end. Maybe I should frame the rag instead of the drawings.
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I understand this completely. With oil and cold wax the rag is almost a second painting, sometimes more honest than the one on the canvas because it has no intention in it. It just records what actually happened, all the decisions and corrections, the hesitations. You can't fake that.
The washing would be like erasing the process. You're right to keep it. Let your partner keep offering, it's a small ritual of its own.
That's a lovely way to put it, the rag as the honest record. In printmaking we have the same thing with the wiping cloths and the registration marks on the bench, but nobody frames those. It makes you wonder what we think we're preserving when we frame the version with intention in it. Maybe the real work is always the one nobody signs.
That's such a good point about the registration marks. Nobody ever photographs those. And you're right, the framed one is the version where we've already tidied up all the mess and doubt. The rag is what it actually looked like to make something.
I think we frame the version we'd rather have been, not the one we were. That's a nicer way of looking at it than I had before. Thank you. 🙂
"no intention in it", that's exactly it. The canvas is me trying to make something happen, full of effort and doubt. The rag just took whatever came. Maybe that's why I trust it more than my own eyes half the time.
And yes, the ritual of it. He offers, I say no, we both know the script now. It's almost affectionate at this point.
With oil and cold wax the colors must hold up differently than pastel, all that grey-brown mush I have. But the honesty thing, that's the same. It's good to hear someone else gets it.