Reflections on the Teche

Art is more about finding out what you don’t know than saying what you do know.

Yesterday I received a birthday present in the mail.  What a treat, especially since my birthday was in August!  My best friend from childhood sent it, a 2011 calendar of Wyatt Waters’ watercolor paintings.  Missy and I grew up together in Jackson.  We have remained friends all these years and try to get together at least once a year.  After our breakfast together in Jackson before Christmas, she went upstairs to a book store.  She wrote, “As I walked in the door this calendar caught my eye and reminded me of you.”  I love it!  It is me!  But more than loving the beautiful artwork, I love that I have a friend who knows me and thinks of me.

Wyatt Waters is a watercolor artist from Jackson, MS, my hometown.  My parents still live near Jackson and my father, too, is an artist there.  I grew up surrounded by fine art.  Each painting that my parents own has a story.  They either know the artist or have some personal reason for selecting the work.  I have tried to continue this practice in my own home.  Jeff and I love folk art, so we have a collection from our artist friends, Jean Wattigny, Paul Schexnayder, Susan Carver, and the late Rosemary Bernard.  I enjoy showing guests how we inadvertently have the theme of three nuns running throughout our collected works.  We also discovered after the purchase of a large metal head by Pat Juneau that it strikes an uncanny resemblance to Maggie’s senior self-portrait.  A little bit on purpose we started a king and queen theme because we live in “the big white castle.” In the kitchen we have matching king and queen monkeys, metal art by Susan Carver.  When we were considering buying this castle, Maggie, our oldest, commented, “The walls are a big, blank, white canvas.”  And we have embraced that canvas with our collection.  The last few years we have had the opportunity to enhance our collection with a Melissa Bonin bayou scene and a photograph of Marjorie Brown Pierson’s, both of whom have been longtime family friends. 

Art has enriched my life and will continue to make connections between me and others. I wrote this poem about one of my father’s drawings.

My Father’s Drawing

Dots of ink and graphite rise in tension with the paper
to build a likeness of mother and child. 
The wild contrast of darks to light plays
in harmony creating a vision of love.
In the meantime, I grew up,
became a woman with children living away
from my father.  His letters come to me in thank you notes
for birthday gifts. Yet everyday I look at this drawing—
the dots of pointillism reach out from the wall
and grant me an audience with his graceful praise.