Yellow Alert

1/15/22

The other day, after my instructor Henry suggested I was ready to move on from orchids to irises, I had quite the mishap with my paints. I had yet to open the tube of yellow, and feeling too lazy to dig around for a safety pin or needle in my grandmother-in-law’s apartment here in Hyderabad, India, I made a small hole with a ballpoint pen. I squeezed, and only a small amount of paint came out, so I squeezed harder…and the entire tube burst open, squirting yellow paint all over my shirt and pants, my paper, and for good measure sending a few small splatters onto the wall and shelves nearby. By some fantastic miracle, my computer, the curtains, and various other vulnerable objects were spared. But my painting time went down the drain, as I spent a good half hour trying to clean my clothes. I not only disrupted myself, but my wife, who had set aside time to do her own watercolor painting along with her mom. We then brought her brother into the mix, who came up from downstairs with some spot-cleaning powder, and eventually we got most of the paint out and soaked my clothes to handwash. My wife had already managed to finish her own watercolor painting for the most part while I was secretly trying to contain the disaster on my own. Coincidentally, she was herself painting blue flowers, which came out quite nicely. I was left feeling dejected and inadequate, looking at the high quality of work she was able to product with minimal experience and effort. Meanwhile, I felt constrained and oppressed by my dyspraxia, which naturally had a lot to do with how I ended up squirting paint all over myself. It brought back so many memories of feeling inadequate to basic tasks in childhood and adolescence, being made fun of for “screwing up” at kicking a soccer ball, or sewing, sawing or silk-screening (both shop and home ec were required, and I did equally terribly in both classes, an equal opportunity failure, or so it seemed to me.) I did manage to recover emotionally enough the next day that I did complete a painting of irises, one I’m quite fond of, although my technique still leaves much to be desired. It’s got me thinking about how “technique” itself as a concept is riddled with ableism. The United States in particular is characterized by an oppressive “can do” culture and toxic positivity. If you’re disabled, just try harder, and you can conform to the mainstream standards of technical excellence. I don’t think traditional Chinese culture has historically been more or less ableist than most other cultures, but certainly as much as any other. I remember being put off years ago reading how traditional Japanese Zen monastics emphasized the importance of sitting correctly, kneeling on a cushion, and I read an account of a westerner about how if you could not do the technique correctly due to  disability, you were basically out of luck. On the other hand, another tendency in American culture, counter to the toxic “can-do” focus, has been to soften and alter and adapt techniques to make them more accessible to elders and disabled people, and this has been criticized by some as corrupting or watering down traditional techniques and thus worsening the impact of cultural appropriation. It’s certainly a complicated issue. But I see a key component of disability empowerment being the adaptation and repurposing of whatever works for you, because even today, much of the time, nobody else is going to do it for you. I believe a respectful attitude can remain even as we modify existing techniques and create new ones that are inspired by traditional techniques of other cultures. Acknowledgment of the source and respectful credit are necessary. And for me, my approach to painting is I think increasingly going to go down this path. I’ve been feeling highly constrained by continuing to overfocus on learning technique, and I realize if I remain stuck like this I’m not going to get anywhere with this project. Given the limited time and my intense resistance, the time is NOW to break out and express freely, drawing respectful inspiration from, and continuing to slowly learn from, traditional Chinese methods. My next painting will demonstrate this. In the meantime, here are my irises: