Dear Teacher with a Paint Brush,
I've always loved art teachers. I think- actually I know- it's because my dad is an artist. Growing up, our home smelled strongly of mineral spirits, oil paint, and fried pork chops. Before my sister and I were nine years old, we could tell the difference between Renoir and Van Gogh. We could also distinguish between oils, pastels, and water colors. In the evenings as we sat around the table consuming mom's porkchops, we talked about Norman Rockwell and John Singer Sargent like they were imaginary guests at our dinner table.
On my honeymoon, I stood in awe of an original Van Gogh in the Fogg Museum on the campus of Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I felt foolish with the warm tears sliding down my cheeks. I'm not an art curator, but I don't think tears frequent fancy art museums. I tried to choke them back, but I couldn't.
Seeing something in a book for so long and finally seeing it with your own two eyes changes a person. I also cried because I knew my dad would never make his way to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
As children, our home was an anomaly. To hear it described makes it sound like we were cultured people with parents who stressed the arts and traveled the world with sophisticated children. The truth is my mom has 17 years of junior college and a resume littered with odd jobs that left her unfulfilled because the job she always liked best was being our mom.
Dad was a mechanic for much of his life and later worked at a logging company. We rarely left the tricounty area. My first time flying was on that same plane that took me to the Fogg Museum.
In lieu of world- wide travel, we talked- a lot. We also read good books like "Mr. Happy," and our parents encouraged us to be children. We drew pictures, collected baseball cards, built forts, got dirty, and somewhere in the mix of that, my dad painted until the wee hours of the morning each night.
Before trailing off to bed, we would kiss his sweaty forehead, and he would ask if we wanted to add a stroke to whatever he was painting that night.
We were nine years old. We always said yes.
Each night, I dipped the paint brush in burnt sienna or magenta depending on my mood. As I held the brush high like a magic wand, I ruled the world for a split second. As my swift swipe danced across the canvas, I felt a sense of elation I only felt again at twenty four years old standing in front of an original Van Gogh.
That's what I love about art. It has the ability to transport a person to a place she might only see in books. Art teachers are the people who help them get there. So, thank you art teachers for turning a mechanic into an artist and for adding color to an otherwise very dull world.
This year, above any other year, we desperately need some color in this starry, starry night of 2020, and you, art teacher, have the distinct privilege of placing a brush in someone's hand.
Giving a kid the chance to add a stroke to the masterpiece of life is no small thing. I know because it changed my life forever.
Don't you see how big your job is?
-CDB