The first and oldest painting, I can recall, in my childhood home is one on our staircase, underneath a bronze chandelier, reminiscent of the 70s. The painting was of a dog, a portrait photo of the head of a beautiful collie, looking thoughtfully up and to the side of the frame. I am not sure if it was that we lived in the pacific northwest or if everything had been styled in the 90s, but our house was composed of white walls, brown wooden doors and cheap, rattling, golden-tin doorknobs. Wooden lining everywhere. The brown and golden hues of the collie fitted perfectly with the brown and bronze hues of our household. When the sun came in through the big window of the stairwell in the mornings, if you were awake early enough, the bronze chandelier glowed, spilling all over the staircase, and the Collie, and everything glowed.
I asked about this painting when I was little one time, likely when I was old enough that it was in my line of vision when I walked up the stairs, and my mother said it was a painting by my great uncle Bob. That’s all I remember, that I thought the name was funny, and that I had a great uncle bob.
My family was full of painters, and so, our home, was full of paintings. Thinking about it now, I am not sure if the paintings affected the feeling of each room, or if the feeling of each room (and all the things that happened in them) affected the hue and flavor of the painting. I wonder if the memories and colors of my childhood would have been different, if there had been different paintings.
The next one I remember was a scene painting of two kids in an apple orchard, picking apples. They were standing specifically under one big apple tree, in a beautiful green field, sparkling with sun. There was a dog there, too I think. We got this one at an apple-themed store, in Port Townsend, on a day trip one time, when I was probably four. There were a lot of evenings, very good ones, and very bad, sat at the dining room table looking at that painting. In the bad evenings I think I was facing away from it, I can’t remember the comfort of the painting. In the good ones, the golden sun would pour in during the summer afternoons through the lace curtains, and the room felt like being outdoors, on a farm. Maybe there is something to be said about how the only time we saw the painting was when there was sun, and natural light poured in.
I spent a year during the pandemic in 2020 on a farm on the English countryside, looking out over an almost identical landscape, with apple trees, and apples scattering the ground, and a tree that reminded me so intently of the tree in the painting. I spent many evenings at the dinner table with my ex and his family there, staring out the window, at a tree that seemed to follow me from my childhood, from one dining room to another. It brought me comfort.
The third painting, I also remember getting. We were at the mall, and there were a collection of paintings by Pino Daeni, an Italian artist, all very large, many seaside visions, focuses on family, small children, mothers. Occasional brushstrokes had been gone over with a 3D oil, so it felt visceral, and inviting. My mom fell in love with them instantly. One in particular, of a mother holding her daughters hand and guiding them along a windy beach for a picnic. The mother is looking down at the daughter, and the daughter is looking up at the mum, and it is as if they both share a secret knowledge of something to come. There is a sense of bravery in both of them, of trust. The colors are warm, exciting, nostalgic. Only in researching this painting did I discover the title.
One of my favorite words in several languages, I have the Portuguese translation tattooed on the inside of my middle finger on my left hand. Afeto. Affection. I had no idea that it had even more meaning to me when I got the tattoo at the time.
The whole house changed when we got that one. It was visible from three rooms. Something in my mom and I changed as well, I think. We saw the strength of ourselves represented up there, and the beauty and promise of something good.
The fourth painting, was there as long as I can remember, so much so it belonged to the house more than I did, more than anyone. In my parent’s room, above the bed, in the master bedroom. Appropriately titled, “Master Bedroom” by someone who would become my favorite artist, Andrew Wyeth. It was a painting that also suited the darker hues of our house, of a white lab curled up on a bed in a dark upholstered room, in front of a very small framed window. What was outside the window was the same view that you would see if you were to look outside our window in the master bedroom; the white siding of the house, and a single tree.
The stillness, and peace, of the painting, almost felt as if it was a window to a room you didn’t want to disturb. It instilled a quietness, a strange removed melancholy, as if it was a window to a place that wasn’t unhappy or exactly happy, but peaceful, and a world, the nature and occurrences of which, had never changed, and never would change. It was not a stillness that felt comforting, it was like the stillness of a waiting room, or the feeling of going to sleep to avoid feeling something very hopeless. An eternal winter, everything gone to sleep.
All of my memories could be recalled with the images of these four paintings. My whole childhood home reconstructed with the assembly of these colors, these visions, shared with me in the most defining years of my life. A home without paintings is a home without hope. When you think about the influence of color day to day, like the influence of architecture in a city, I am grateful to my mom for painting our kitchen yellow, for decorating it with apples, for falling in love and erecting landscapes, and portraits, for getting rid of the terribly ugly 80s wallpaper in the family room and replacing it with something tasteful. For providing windows for my child soul to disappear into; like portals all around the house that filled the memories of my childhood with life and color, without which, the rays of sun through the window would’ve been less bright, and the staircase less golden.
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