A few weeks ago at my weekly painting class, our instructor gave us the assignment to paint our favorite shoe. I chose a clunky old gray boot that I used to wear every day but haven’t worn for years. I don’t know why I no longer wear those boots because I truly love them. Every few weeks I try them on but they don’t seem to go with anything I wear.
But I hold on to the boots hoping that one day I’ll wear them again. They were an expensive purchase for me. I bought them ten years ago in New York City, at Barneys. They are the one and only item I’ve ever purchased from Barneys and, even at 60% off, they were way above my normal boot budget.
On the first night of painting “the boot”, I struggled mightily. I couldn’t get the angle and ended up using a turpentine-soaked rag to wipe off my entire first attempt. I started again but hated my rendering. This boot that I loved was not translating to the canvas with my amateur painting skills.
The next week, we revisited the boot paintings. I recommitted but felt deflated by the large swath of gray that I couldn’t manage to detail with my remedial oil painting skills. The other women in my class seemed to be producing masterpieces — a perfect weathered cowboy boot, a favorite seaweed-stained flip flop, a sexy blue suede women’s oxford. How could I make my boot lovable again?
My teacher, circled the room periodically to offer advice. Every time she peeked over my shoulder I whined, “Help,” I felt heavily daunted by the task of painting the gray boot, “it’s not working.”
In her calm deep voice, she’d pat my shoulder and say, “You’re getting it. Just keep working.”
And so I did. I stared at that old gray boot for two hours. I used a tiny brush to paint some of the scuff marks. When that didn’t work, I mixed a lighter shade of gray, then a darker one, and tried that. Back and forth I went, trying different improvised techniques.
By the end of the class, I was deep in. At some point, the shadows of the shoe appeared in the foreground and the gray boot moved into the background of my view. I focused on painting the shadows and then moved on to the zipper, then back to the scuffed gray suede along the base. At 7:55 pm, five minutes before the end of class, I stood back and realized it was working. I was getting it.
“You guys,” I said, directing my revelation to my painting partners, “it’s amazing! The more you look, the more you see!”
There’s a Mary Oliver poem, “Moths,” about the tiny white creatures. The second stanza reads:
If you notice anything,
It leads you to notice
more
and more
This is true for painting and this is true for life. In her poem, Oliver goes on to detail how the little white moths float and flutter in the shadows, how their wings reflect in the sunlight, while also reflecting on how inconsequential she is in the grand scheme of things (my interpretation).
You aren’t much, I said, one day to my reflection, Mary Oliver writes in “Moths.” I understand this to be her way of making herself smaller, putting herself into the background, so the world around her could come more fully into view.
I know that one of my struggles in painting that gray boot was my ego comparing my work to my fellow painters. But somewhere in the moments after my teacher coached me to “keep going,” I let go of that and dove into the world of my gray boot. Once I was there, in the noticing, I could see what I needed to paint and I could stay on that path.
I am drawn to Mary Oliver’s poetry because she has the ability to describe, in such concise, simple language, the details of the natural world. Throughout her life, she was a master noticer.
When I walk in the morning I try to notice like Mary Oliver. Walking along the lake, when I take my time to truly look, the detail that comes into my view expands. I see a cormorant balancing like the Karate Kid on a log popping out of the water near the marina. I notice the symmetrical patterns the weeds make along the shoreline. I see a shadow that, upon further examination, is actually a small float of coots clustered together next to the dock.
When I stop and notice, a whole other world comes into view.
At the end of “Moths,” Oliver describes the tiny moths hiding away for the night:
At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless,
in those dark halls of honey.
Mary Oliver noticed the tiny white moths and then she kept noticing, kept watching until they went away for the night. Even then, the moths didn’t just disappear, they “slipped between the pink lobes of the moccasin flower.” And, if you’ve read her poetry, you’ll know that she spent most of the days of her life observing the wondrous details that make up the world. For me, painting that old gray boot was a tiny moment, a micro-experience in the scheme of life, of seeing things Mary Oliver style.
Tomorrow night I’ll go back to painting class to revisit the gray boot. I’m not daunted anymore. I’m excited. I can hardly wait to see what tiny new details I notice.