Bottom of the Bucket (Final painting)

Bottom of the Bucket - A Painting Created by Friends

Oil, oil pastel, iron, and silver leaf on gesso board

36 x 36 inches

2014

(Please visit this post for the story behind this painting.)

Bottom of the Bucket - A Painting Created by Friends

I had been staring at a largish blank gesso board in my living room for some time. I had a few ideas about what I wanted to do with it, but I couldn't seem to get myself motivated to start. I thought to myself "I just need to play." So, I asked my son Ethan to outline some fun shapes for me. He did. Then, looking at the shapes it donned on me that it might be fun to build a painting around other people's suggestions. Facebook seemed like a good place to go to solicit help, so I posted this post:

I would like to do a bit of an experiment. Please give me one colour (simple colours please...I'm not very fancy), and I will build an abstract painting with anyone who would like to contribute. I'll post photos in the comments below as I go. Kind of like a choose your own adventure painting. When you stop adding colour suggestions, I'll stop painting. The painting will be complete. The adventure over. Anyone want to play?

To my delight someone quickly replied.  Then a few more people and a few more people.  What I thought was going to be a simple project to jumpstart my creative juices turned into a meaningful collaborative effort.  I (poorly) photo-documented each colour suggested as I went, and shared them with my friends in a stream in the comments of that original post.  Along the way I also asked for some favourite writing on community.  I incorporated some of those suggestions into the painting as I went along as well.

Colour by colour, comment by comment, this painting was created...

First Ronnie gave me teal...

Nora gave me yellow...

Sue suggested pink...

Annelies said purple! A light, gentle purple...

Christine gave me peacock blue...

Christina gave me tangerine...

Shawn said gray (which I added in text from a piece of writing Colleen suggested called "The Work of Local Culture" by Wendell Berry)...

(After which I decided to call the painting "Bottom of the Bucket" in reference to this part of the essay tagged above:  

"However small a landmark the old bucket is, it is not trivial. It is one of the signs by which I know my country and myself. And to me it is irresistibly suggestive in the way it collects leaves and other woodland sheddings as they fall through time. It collects stories too as they fall through time. It is irresistibly metaphorical. It is doing in a passive way what a human community must do actively and thoughtfully. A human community too must collect leaves and stories, and turn them into an account. It must build soil, and build that memory of itself—in lore and story and song—which will be its culture. And these two kinds of accumulation, of local soil and local culture, are intimately related.")

Next Caren suggested dark forest green...

Heather wanted to see magenta...

Carrie suggested mauve...

Shari asked for dark blue purple...

Jeannie said she would like sage green...

Amanda said indigo blue...

Jody said red...

Kathryn asked for fuchsia...

Jo said emerald green...

Lillian wanted to see chartreuse...

Eli asked for cyan blue...

Karen said burnt orange/red (which I added, again, in text (suggested by Deb) from a poem entitled "Portrait by a Neighbour" by Edna St. Vincent Millay)...

Lisa asked to see black...

Wendy wanted to see deep royal purple...

Florence suggested red...

Sue asked for fuchsia...

Linda suggested rust (which I plan on adding to the two inch sides of the painting and here's an example of what it will look like)...

Christina said vermillion...

Laura said she loved that blue green colour that you get from mixing blue and green together in watercolour...

(here's a closeup of that)

Hallie wanted red for valentine's day! like fire engine, coca cola vibrant red (which is added one last time in text, suggested by Schuyler, from a poem called "Flying at Night" by Ted Kooser)...

(here's a detail of that)

Zander thought there needed to be more orange (which my son, Ethan, suggested a home for)...

Kelly wanted some white...

And, the final suggestion was made by Alex and seconded by Marta - silver...

(one final detail)

I wasn't careful about photographing the colours accurately, and I will take a better photo of the finished painting another day.  But, the success, for me, isn't in the finished painting anyway, although I do think it is "full of life" as my husband says.  The real success, in my opinion, is in the connections made by me and my friends, and my friends with each other, their friends, and people we all may not know in person on that one humble Facebook post.  

In the wonderful essay I took text from by Wendell Berry, the writer laments the loss of shared stories and our growing distance from one another in our modern world.  But I think in some small way I've shown (even if only to myself) that we can still build community, share stories, and reach out to one another. We might do it differently than we once did.  But to me, it's no less meaningful.  In truth, I would never have appealed to so many people to make a painting with me any other way.  I'm just too shy.  My world is bigger thanks to our modern means of communicating.  I'm pretty excited about that.  

Thanks to everyone who joined me.  I have omitted surnames to protect privacy.