I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the majority of people don’t like being physically dirty, especially if they can help it. Something to do with a post-Victorian-era obsession with being shiny and clean, human embodiments of New Automobile exterior and smell. People were told that if they scrubbed down, they would attract a mate. Even though the truly informed know that a little bit of funk will send out the sexy pheromones, scoring you more from nature’s sweaty magic than from a bar of Ivory.
But this is not about my praise or un-praise of hygiene. This is about an inexplicable feel, the weird beauty of presumably-clean skin splattered carelessly with paint.
I shun smocks when attacking a canvas. I would naked-scenic design for shows if I could. It’s been a habit of mine to become one with my art from a very young age; like most pre-schoolers, I reveled in the tactile delights of squishing plasticky tempera through my fingers, but I never understood why there was a cut-off, around age 7 I think, of such practices. The age of reason? Reason that cleanliness was next to godliness in the world of elementary learning? I learned more from observing the unique patterns and blends of color in the paint streaks across my arms than from any stupid wheel chart meant to be filled inside the lines with shitty, unyielding crayons. I’ve forever hated washing my hands after completing a great project. It stops me from discovering the adjunct, accidental piece of art I could have created on myself.
There’s the sheer visceral pleasure of seeing myself rainbow, sure, but there’s a deeper reason for why it’s so pleasing. I’ve always been enamored with trying to match people I meet with colors that seem appropriate. Mystics and BravoTV matchmakers might call this an “aura”; though I don’t buy into the image of an airy halo surrounding us, I think that we have our own special shade deep within us. It makes sense. Everyone has a color. Just like it’s easier to solve others’ problems than solve your own, it’s easier to label other people with a color than yourself. My mom is a plummy aubergine, full of jewel-tone comfort like the old interiors of Starbucks before they decided to revamp themselves into a more modern, cold metallic kind of deal. My best friend is the obnoxious chartreuse of a floppy velvet hat circa 1977, but she would wrongly claim she’s something stereotypically girly, like lilac. But in no world would I ever be best friends with a lilac person. Lilac people are the types who have scrapbooking parties and fix festive ribbons in their tiny dogs’ head-fur for various holidays. My boyfriend is a serious slate blue, like the Crayola color (I know I knocked crayons a short while ago, but Crayola is particularly useful for specific, universal shade referencing). He is a permanent rainy day in the best way possible: drinking coffee with cool-smelling air on your face through the crack of an open window, hiding under blankets with soft jazz piano in the background. His slate balances out whatever bold, but very-enigmatic color I may be.
And though I’ve tried so many times in my life to pin down this exact hue, the hue of my soul, it’s an impossible feat. It lies up there with coming close to self-actualization, or whatever that means to me at my fifth-life landmark. The day I settle on being a dark turquoise, or maybe a vermillion kind of woman is the day I'll feel truly whole. I’m half-expecting it to just come to me out of nowhere, while I’m taking a shower or picking out produce at the supermarket, but I’m also half-aware of the fact that this day may never arrive. And the idea of never coming up with a real label for myself in this lifetime scares me to death.
Someone once asked, in a getting-to-know-you circle game back in high school theatre class, “What would be a question that you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?”
I immediately came up with a question-answer six years ago, and it remains the same today: “What do you want to do with your life?”
I’ll never get to be an endocrinologist or pathologist because I’m mathematically-challenged, but I’d love to actually have a job where I help people and read all day about diseases. I’ll leave the scientific stuff to the indigo people, the hunter green people; too little faith in my own left-brain, even if it’s told me, under its breath, to go to med school during my weekly perusal of The NY Times Magazine’s “Diagnosis” column.
I’ll never get to be a Broadway star because I can’t deal with the utter brutality of show biz attitudes; it’s what the starry-eyed plan was for as long as I can remember, and it ended in tears, and a lightening-fast withdrawal from the theater program of my university. Everyone was too neon: bracingly artificial and corrosive to my insides.
And I’ll never get to be a painter because I’ve wasted so much time (and still am) trying to do other, un-artsy, academic things that don’t make me happy. But I know that what I need most, in the midst of unending paper writing, is a large piece of muslin to lovingly stretch over wooden bars, a muted rainbow of oils in front of me, a large brush to play out the long-stifled self.
Don’t you dare glare at me when I emerge from my room clad in ratty sweatpants layered in crackled, dried-up paint. The cadmium yellow speckling my cheek is there because I was really into this particular gradient effect for a sunset sky. My hair may be matted in spots where I got too enthusiastic with turpentine (a bad habit of a blend-happy watercolorist). I reek of chemicals, but the smell is so delicious, they should bottle it for everyday wearing. This is my battle garb. I am fighting a war inside myself, against myself.
“What do you want to do with your life?”
Choosing is the hardest thing I’ll ever do, if I do.
So keeping tangible aura-color options on my skin while in my blissful artist mode is totally logical for me, akin to buying those mini-buckets of Benjamin Moore for your walls, and testing out each of the options in little squares all next to one another to compare, contrast.
Getting dirty each time I paint is my most earnest attempt to come clean.