My father's brush,
in '68 it painted me
with a distant look, a flannel shirt
the canvas is another me
an early, flat, imagined me
Now the strokes are dry
and the artist home
and I wonder
Why didn't he paint,
Why couldn't he paint
a different me?

My sister was cleaning the dusty, haunted basement of her art gallery when she found it. Two years ago. In a green, weathered Barnwood frame, it was a portrait of a four or five-year-old boy. A faded oil painting of yours truly, slouching in a black and red flannel shirt, holding a small red truck.

On a summer afternoon, when I was back home, I stopped by the gallery. She slid it from beneath its cardboard cover and handed it to me, smiling, “Guess what I found?”

Wait, this was me? Painted by my father in the nineteen-sixties?

“Remember this? I found it downstairs and for all of the times I’ve been down there, I’ve never noticed it. It was dad – he painted you. And you were so cute,” she said, with a sweet smile and hug.

She was of course lying about the cute part because I certainly wasn’t.

Oh, dad. Seriously? This is me? Your precious toddler? My father was a celebrated, generational artist. But this?

What gifted artist would paint a portrait of his own son without embellishing it a bit? You know, like asking me to wear a nice tee-shirt instead of a ratty flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up past my chubby forearms. And jeez, what loving artist/father would actually paint in a double chin when it was so totally unnecessary?

And to top it all off, it really wouldn't have been that hard to exercise a little artistic license and pretend that I didn't have a large chunk of my hair missing in front. Maybe the barber had said “whoops” or I was experimenting with scissors. And he thought it would be a clever reminder.

No wonder why it hid itself in the basement. No wonder my sister had to work extra hard on her sweet smile and gentle hug.

I wouldn't expect a Vermeer effort, but...

Ahhh, you knew.

Of course, dad, you knew - as an artist as well as a father - that imperfections are fundamentally endearing, even beautiful.

Rumi knew it too:

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night.
If you want a rose, do not run from the thorns.
If you want love, do not hide from yourself.

In other words, if you want love, if you want to find happiness, get out of your own way.

Over the past few years, it's been hard to share, compromise, embrace flaws, imperfections, and personal differences. Is it a fear of my own failings? If we can't readily accept flawed selves, should we hide?

Dad, you knew. There is no perfection without interesting and beautiful imperfections.

Like the delicate cracks that grace the pigment of The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

Like the pencil lines, the ones you didn't erase on your finest watercolors. The ones you said made the paintings more interesting.

And maybe like the ones I have. Whether they're in the version you painted or in the one I see in the mirror... we both have plaid shirts and double chins and missing hair.

Dad's portrait hangs on my bedroom wall. Stoically facing my bed. It dares me, every morning, to hear my father's voice.

"Hey, John this is you," it whispers, "at your very best."

It's a good start to the day.

#painting

The Painting of Me