I Wish I Could “Paint What I See"
November 14, 2022
Writer: Skylar Wallison
Editor: Lynn Sabieddine
“Skylar, just paint what you see.”
So there I was, attempting to replicate the face of a deer fossil all while hoping for at least an A- in my senior year art class. The struggle to paint “what I saw” kept me with a blank, fossil-less page for the whole semester.
I have always been fascinated with art but have never been able to do it myself. I have written pages upon pages of analyses on the paintings of the 19th century, the abstract expressionist pieces of Jackson Pollock, and the Neo-expressionist works of Jean Michel Basquiat. Yet, put me in a room with a canvas and paintbrush, and it will seem as though art is the very last of my interests.
Growing up, I watched my younger sister Allegra paint “what she saw” all the time. It felt as if she got the artistic gene: being able to shade paint into a three-dimensional scene, easily notice and replicate contrast and color schemes, and all the while seeming completely unaware of how jealous it made me. My baby sister, better than me? Such a concept irked me to my core, until I found art history.
I began my Asian Art History class in the spring semester of junior year. My teacher Ms. Asch, a retired docent at the New York Asia Society museum and ex-Wall Street Business tycoon, intimidated me. In my eyes, she was a genius: her wealth of knowledge about ancient and modern Asian art combined with her ability to express it aloud, inspired me instantly. We studied every artist and technical style from Esoteric Buddhist textiles, to the Tale of Genji handscrolls. This class was the first positive interaction I had ever experienced with art. Writing analytical essays with artistic details as my “evidence” felt easy to me. I have always been a creative person, dancing from ages two to eighteen, finding joy in performances and live music, but I never knew I could feel talented in a visually artistic area.
And then I realized: this whole time I could always write “what I saw” even if I could not paint it.
From then on, I felt my connection to art become legitimized. I loved the sensation of knowing the name of an artist or being able to decode the message behind a painting in a museum.
Now picture this: a painting too beautiful to be a photograph, a masterpiece so ornate that it stops you in your tracks. This painting, Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes, could bring one to tears. And to be honest, I was the one you probably saw crying in the museum. The piece depicts a landscape of the Andes- with a flowing waterfall, luscious greenery, and an almost overwhelming amount of detail. When tasked with writing an analytical essay about the painting, the words could not flow fast enough. This feeling: being affected by art, being moved by art is what inspires me to write. Heart of the Andes is only one of many paintings that have transformed me as a writer and as a thinker.
People can experience art in different ways. They can appreciate its beauty, research its historical context, or maybe even paint their own. It took a long time for me to settle down in this view. While I cannot, and probably will never be able to replicate a fossil with oil paint, I can write pages on its features and what it makes me think. I hope in the future I will always have the opportunity to “write what I see,” leaving no detail spared on my page. How one displays the details is up to the individual, and I think I will stick with the words.
Image: Hannah Tiller
