I read somewhere – I think it was Annie Dillard – about the earth looking like a paint-by-numbers canvas and thought about the one time I got one of those sets as a child. Disaster. I never was much of a colorer – the lines absolutely defeated me and this was back in the day when staying in the lines mattered. Shoot, I wanted to stay within those lines. I just couldn’t. The perfection of hand and eye moving together simply defeated me. Did then, does now. So you can imagine the horror of my efforts to add to the color-line mix a sequence of numbers coordinated to color that had to be the same every time – with just one deviation causing utter failure as the lovely landscape or Raggedy Ann turned into a horror-movie version of itself. There are no do-overs when it comes to painting by the numbers. No margin for error. The expectation of that pre-set ‘you-too-can-be-an-artist’ lie weighed heavy on me before I even began. Who can meet that kind of demand from a piece of paper? I couldn’t. I didn’t. And I can’t.
So while I absolutely adore the writing of Annie Dillard, I have to say she took me to a far different place than I’m sure she intended with that passing reference to farmland laid out so neat and precise that it minded her of painting by the numbers.
Maybe painting outside the lines is something to be celebrated; but I have to tell you that coloring like a five-year-old when you’re 57 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
