The Artist's Prerogative

One of the best parts of being an artist, besides of course the fact that I don't have to hang Velvet Elvis on my walls because I have so much original art to choose from, is that I have the freedom to create the world I want. If I want to move a mountain, I can. If I don't like a person, I can erase him. If I want a horse, I can have one with the flick of a pencil. If I want snow or rain or sunshine.... all are equally within my grasp. The world I create is only limited by the skill with which I can draw it.

My mom and I were chatting a few days ago, and she told me that once I was with her while she was struggling to paint something that she really did not feel added to the beauty of the scene. She was painting from nature, gazing out on a landscape, and as I recall there were just too many bushes for her taste.

"Then just leave it out," I had told her. She was flabbergasted. She told me this was an astonishing revelation to her.
"You are an artist, not a camera," I told her, "You have the prerogative to add or delete anything you want."
When I paint trees, for example, I usually make an effort to paint the main trunk and largest limbs faithfully, but then the smaller limbs I just design in the way that gives my picture the most visual impact and the least frustration to my impatient hand.
I could see my mother, out of the corner of my eye, with almost a lunatic smile on her face jabbing at her scene with a wide brush, obliterating the offensive and difficult to draw little bushes.

Of course, if I could, I would erase cancer, and diabetes, and deviated septums. If I could, I would add ten telephone calls a day from distant sons, and a belly button that actually had a use like by pushing it short grey wiry hair would grow long and lustrous. I would wipe away twenty years of wrinkles but leave the wisdom that comes with each hard earned crevice. I would patch broken hearts and return orphans to mothers. I would remove every tooth designed to rip meat and replace it with only grinding molars. I would add a loving owner for every lonely dog, with an endless supply of milk bones. I would give snakes a different planet. This is just the short list.

One of my art class students once gazed absentmindedly into the distance as I was teaching a technique before the class, and then she raised her hand.
"Mrs. Kaseorg," she said, her face puckered in deep thoughtfulness, "Do you think there will be erasers in heaven?"
I paused, and considered the incredible insight of this young mind.
"No, I don't think we would need them," I answered.

Of course, my thoughts are not original. There is never an original thought. There are only recycled thoughts in perhaps a new form, but the essence is the same. Long ago, Jeremiah the prophet was commanded by God to go to the house of a potter. He was to watch the potter and wait for God's message. I love this story, because this is just how I think God often speaks to me. I watch the world around me and try to hear what He is saying. Anyway, Jeremiah watches the potter make a pot, and it is not a very good pot, so the potter smashes the clay and reshapes it into a better pot. I imagine around this time Jeremiah is wincing as he glances heavenward, because the symbolism is getting just a tad spooky. And then, in case Jeremiah has a head of cornmeal, God tells him explicitly-
"O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the Lord. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (Jer. 18:6)
If this were the only verse you read in the Bible, you may well go about like a beetle, hiding under rocks, but as with any good painting, it is critical to look at the whole thing. This Potter of all Potters spends very little time smashing His pots. Mostly He is binding broken hearts, breathing life into dusty bones, giving strength to the weary, and wings to eagles. And He reminds us over and over again that He specializes in broken pots because when they are broken, He can reshape them lovingly with His own hands.

Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8