DANCING SHADOWS

 

                                DANCING SHADOWS

I was taking an art class.  I had found a photo which inspired me to try my first oil painting of scenery: dark brown water, wheat-coloured fall grasses with a backdrop of birch trees and sky.  A trick of the camera had placed some deep blue marks in the foreground, in front of the dark water.  These inspired me to paint a phantom blue bird and matching blue bulrushes  in deep Prussian blue.  How I loved the colours!

I had just finished doing the grasses with a palette knife.  Now, before doing the many tall trees in the background, I was painting the sky and shadows between the trees,  I swirled Prussian blue and white around and around for a mottled sky, and did the tree shadows with the  deepest tone of Prussian blue. 

Just as I loaded the brush with white for the actual trees, our teacher came by to check on my progress.

“STOP! Your painting is finished!” she shouted.

“Wha…but….” I yelped.

She held it up and started explaining to me and to the group of classmates who had gathered around my desk.

“Look at it artistically. It doesn’t have to be logical. Those mysterious shapes have movement-they MIGHT be trees or not.  The composition is excellent.  Perspective doesn’t matter in this piece.”

Suddenly, I could see that the painting worked.  The dark, dancing shadows were the highlight.  

The painting had been changed from mundane realism to art. It was not what I had intended, but much better.  It took the master’s eye of a veteran artist to recognize this and halt me in time.. 

In life, Jesus is the One Who takes me from the mediocre and makes me soar. I kinda think He put that blue bird there, too.