Doing Art In Art Class
The Art classroom, like in many high schools, was a sanctuary for the student who thinks differently, who is walking her or his own unique path, not following a fad, culture, or religion.
Mr. Dale was the teacher, a trusted consult, and a friend. He had studied Art, Architectural Design, and the History of the Impressionists at a university in Amsterdam. For his Doctoral dissertation he simply walked in the footsteps of painter Vincent van Gogh, and then wrote about it. His teachers thought him brilliant but he knew laziness was a better ‘moniker’. Mr. Dale painted in oils, experimented with water-colors, designed ‘artistic environments’, and always made every difficult task into an art project.
He was also a trickster. He loved playing simple practical jokes on his students. Telling Bill there’s a little smudge on his face and he’ll wipe it off. Then instead, Mr. Dale actually wipes red paint onto Bill’s face. And all the other students would be smiling and not saying a thing.
Mr. Dale was the best.
Bill cruised into the classroom. “No one can be late for doing art,” Mr. Dale had told them on the first day of class, “You are either here or not here, and I don’t care. You are only cheating yourself.”
Students were busy setting up, mixing colors, and brushing paint onto their canvases as class began. They were expected to start right away on their assignment, no matter what was happening or who was talking. This class was about ‘doing’.
Bill pulled his 16”x20” canvas from the rack, collected a set of acrylic paints from the closet and two brushes from the rack by the sink. The students all sat in a big circle of tables. Everyone could then see everyone else’s art, and the teacher could stand in the middle of the room and talk to every student as if they were in the front row. On Bill’s table a small easel had been left by the student in the previous class and Bill set his canvas sturdily onto it.
Mr. Dale was talking to a group by his desk and gave Bill a nod when he had entered. "So brown is not a color, not a single frequency. We are actually seeing a mix, a blend, of green, red, orange, blue, and yellow all together. It's only our brain that makes all those colors together turn into brown.”
Mr. Dale felt he had stimulated the student’s curiosity but their faces showed mostly confusion.
“Maybe they will understand it in a dream tonight,” he thought whimsically.
“Brown is called a ‘spectral color’ because it is made from multiple frequencies of many colors. Brown is an illusion but then it's also reality, because our brains say so. Brown people are truly ‘people of color’.”
The group of students were impressed but none of them had a comment or question. Just an “Oh, cool” and, “That’s amazing.”
Overhearing Mr. Dale, Bill was sure none of those kids had a clue about what he had just said. Such is the life of an art teacher, Bill supposed.
Except one. Her name was Katherine but she called herself ‘Katt’ and when she had done a fine piece of artwork, she would call her Artist-self ‘Katt the Cat’.
Bill was impressed with her art. He was happy to plunk away at the details of his Impressionistic painting, because that’s what Mr. Dale had told the students to do. And it was faster so ‘what the hay?’ But the Cat painted her details with exacting brush placement. And to Bill’s surprise, she didn’t take any longer than he did. She was in total focus and her hand seemed to be working independently. Like she could go take a break and get a bite to eat and her hand would still be at her canvas placing details into everything. Then when she got back she’d say, “Good job Katt the Cat”, and carry on.
“How does she do that?” Bill wondered. He wanted to find out more about her but she was an intensely independent nut that wouldn't crack easily.
Bill thought of ways he might meet her. Katt thought of her painting. And Mr. Dale thought of Vincent, sighed, and walked to the middle of his Art room.
“So sit down kiddies, let’s all be doing art,” Mr. Dale began. “We're working on an Impressionistic painting. And our medium is acrylic paint. Acrylic paint is made with chemical molecules, invented in the mid-1800s. Before then, paint was only made with minerals and oil.”
Mr. Dale paid homage to Vincent van Gogh by teaching his art. Not just his techniques but his creative process and incredible endurance.
* * *
Vincent's smallest painting was the self-portrait he painted shortly after he had cut off part of his ear. His canvas was only a seven by five inch piece of cardboard. His color palette was a resonance of his orange beard contrasting with his vibrant green eyes.
Mr, Dale had an old print of that painting in the Supply Room. He kept it hidden behind a big box of old crayons. When Mr. Dale was feeling ‘blue’ he would set the big box of crayons on the floor and it became a table. Then he would sit in his chair, eat a treat, drink a beer, and talk to Vincent by talking to the small painting.
“Vincent has taught me the most important things in art,” Mr. Dale would say.
It was actually just a small slice Vincent had removed from his left earlobe. Not a big deal, considering the popularity of plastic surgery and piercing one’s ears today. Body piercing is now labeled as innocent ‘body art’ and the enthusiasm and creativity by which the ‘crazy people’ of our modern society love mutilating their own ears and decorating their bodies with permanent tattoos is common.
Psychologists know that piercing or cutting one’s skin anywhere on their body can often be a person’s way of acting out, to get noticed. It can be a way for them to suffer the due pains of their shabby life, or a traumatic event that caused that person to shut down their true personality and change into an altered version of their self.
Compared to the dramatic body piercings of today, Vincent’s sliced ear was ‘small potatoes’.
Mr. Dale had a powerful connection with Vincent’s paintings. He experiences Vincent’s art as a ‘universal archetype’. A view of life that suggests all humans are following the same physiological path created by their humanness.
It’s known as: The Way, The Tao, one’s Sacred Journey, a Pilgrimage, Climbing the Mountain, Taking the Leap of Faith, and Mr. Dale’s favorite, Finding your way Home.
When life and his students have beat Mr. Dale down, he lies in bed and cries a chant that just floats through his head in the moment and then out.
“Going home, I’m on my way home, not here, not there, no way, I’m going no where. I see what’s true and it makes me blue. I wonder Lord, you Almighty, do you ever feel blue? Me too. So what do we do?, oh Lord of mine and so many others? Are all of them my brothers? oh please Lord, let them just be others.”
Mr. Dale laughed and applauded to himself. He was just a funny guy. The monks in his monastery called him the Funny Buddha. In part because he was funny but also they explained, “In the Tibetan language your name sounds like a phrase of words we use to describe a person who is wandering his life away. And when his friends and neighbors call him out, he just does the opposite or switches directions.” The monk spoke the phrase and Art tried to hear and understand it. But no, it didn’t sound like anything except just what it was.
Van Gogh is famous, in part, because he fits the perfect ‘archetype’ of the ‘crazy painter artist’. Despite history’s exaggerations, the public’s need for clear archetypes to pattern their own lives after, require the mystical legend of the poor wandering painter, Vincent van Gogh, to live eternally.
* * *
Johannes Vermeer was the Dutch artist who painted, Girl With a Pearl Earring. Her stunning blue hat, an oriental turban, is painted with Ultramarine Blue, an organic blue made from the mineral called Lapis Lazuli. This was, and is, the only mineral, plant, or animal on earth, the only ‘anything’ that contains an organic blue substance suitable for dying or painting.
“And very valuable! By the ounce, more expensive than gold. That was in 1665. About two hundred and forty years later, in 1889, Vincent van Gogh painted Starry Night with Cobalt Blue, a paint made from the chemical Cobalt. Very cheap, only a few franks for a tube. “You are using the exact same paint that Van Gogh used!”
His students were taking it all in as they painted, as each did her or his art. Hearing about a master-artist while practicing being an artist, and using the same tools and paints as that famous person, was a magical feeling. A thought, an idea, that one could too, paint his or her own masterpiece.
”As you add detail, your painting will come alive. Remember, you're not trying to paint a detail to look realistic. Use only enough paint to make the viewer see the detail as part of the painting. Then all the details will blend and look naturally realistic.
“It's not what you, the painter, sees, it’s how the observer, the viewer, sees your art.”
The bell rang and students cleaned up and scattered for lunch break. Mr. Dale hovered around his desk with a few advanced students and was talking more about the color blue.
"I gotta tell someone," is all Bill could think as he approached his trusted teacher’s desk.
“But if there’s no blue then what about bluebirds and blue sky?” asked April, surprised and confused with the explanation Mr. Dale was giving.
“Just like there is no blue sky,” the Master took his flock deeper into the weird world of reality.
“What?” Marci was stumped.
“What color is the air?”
“Air doesn’t have any color.”
“What about water. What color is water?”
“Okay, I get it,” Marci conceded.
“The color blue is refracted light. Sunlight refracting on the water molecules in the air.”
“Like a rainbow,” April spoke up with an inside smile. She realized she did know something about creating art, “But just the blue frequencies.”
Mr. Dale smiled inside too. Some of his students were actually learning! He felt like a Proud Papa, “Exactly correct, April.”
“So too with everything else we see as blue. A Blue Jay’s feathers aren’t any color—maybe grey, a neutral tone. But the molecules in the bird’s feathers refracts the blue frequencies of light coming from the sun.
“Have you seen a pigeon? We would say the pigeon’s feathers are gray in color. But when a pigeon starts to flap its wings, the viewer wills see subtle but obvious rainbows. The movement of the pigeon’s wings causes the sun’s light to refract.
“Peacocks too!” April proudly added.
“And fish,” Mr. Dale added. “A grey fish flopping in the sunlight creates lots of rainbows, refracted light.” Mr. Dale showed his Buddha smile, “Check it out.”
Marci was impressed with the physics of how the world worked, and that April was so smart about art. “Maybe April could be my friend in Art class,” Marci thought with sincerity.
“It’s metaphysics,” Mr. Dale concluded, “All color is an illusion created by our brains.”
The group broke up, all with at least a little understanding of color and how their brain works. April nodded a smile to Bill as he approached the teacher’s desk. Bill and April never spoke to each other in a classroom.
Mr. Dale sat down and Bill spoke up, “Mr. Dale, I wanna talk to you about something."
Mr. Dale so enjoyed a teenager’s ability to speak and not say anything. "You are speaking, and it is about something." Mr. Dale smiled and Bill replied in same.
Then Mr. Dale stood up and headed for the door, shouting to the room in his go-away voice, “Goodbye now everyone. See you tomorrow, uh, next class, whatever. You’re not here any more, go back to where you came from, goodbye, yes, me too, clear the room, be gone,” and he lovingly push the last boy out with his hip and locked the door.
Mr. Dale knew it would take Bill a little while to speak up so Mr. Dale began cleaning the room and moving some reams of drawing paper back to the Supply Room. Bill followed him around like a puppy dog.
“I’ve, uh, had something weird happen and, uh, I need to talk to someone, uh, an adult who will understand, and not think, well, that I'm crazy.”
Bill was so nervous speaking, he now felt ill. But Mr. Dale heard the Truth in Bill’s voice, and sat down in a student chair.
"Of course I'll believe you, Bill. Anything. Give it your best shot. Amaze me," then Mr. Dale smiled his Buddha smile and was quiet. Bill heard the air conditioner click off, then nothing. A silent moment that now needed to be filled.
"I had a dream. And, well, it was pretty weird,” Bill began.
Mr. Dale became focused with the attention and observation skills of a master teacher, a friend, and a soulful human being.
Bill told of his dream, the numbers, and how he feels that it is some type of message or code.
"I know someone, a guy I've known most of my adult life. He loves puzzles, cryptography, and codes.” Mr. Dale stood up and walked to his desk, “And he’s very good with ‘thinking out of the box’ and making weird ideas sound normal. I'll give him a call, maybe this weekend. How about that?"
Bill grinned with an attempt at a Buddhist smile and Mr. Dale laughed and return his.
But Bill hadn’t told Mr. Dale about the black numbers or the Dark Algorithm that erased numbers, and would erase people. Nor about his feelings of doom and horror. He didn’t know what the numbers meant but they had come with other messages.
Messages about destruction and removal, about masses of people suffering and dying. The Dark Algorithm would create confusion. People would believe they were doing the right thing but would end up doing the opposite. And it was happening right now. People hadn’t noticed but society was changing, some people becoming nicer and others becoming meaner.
Bill now saw the world as a scary place. With unconscious self-absorbed human beings who would act out in anyway that they were told. People that would become a mass, a mass of humanity so large and free that nothing could change or stop it.
* * * *