It’s been a couple weeks since I sat down with Kristin to talk about creativity and my least favorite topic, me. You may be reading this because it is on llamaart.com or you just finished listening to the podcast and heard my answer to the last question Kristin asked before we wrapped, either way it’s cool. I hope you enjoy this.

Kristin ended our discussion about creativity with asking me the question, and I am paraphrasing, “If I could take one thing with me, something important to me, to a disserted island what would it be?” My bullshit response was tantamount to treason in an interview and I want to set the record straight after my couple weeks of contemplation.

The one thing I would take with me is the first painting I ever received, the first piece of art I ever saw created, the only thing I have carried with me throughout my life, and the one thing I will be cremated with. It is nothing special, most people according to research have at least one of these things in their house, and technically it is not anything special. Special to anyone other than myself. This has hanged in every apartment I have ever occupied and hangs in the en suite bathroom of my first home; and it is the first story of art I can ever remember. 

It is a landscape painting, a la Bob Ross, with cute little bushes, a beautiful blue lake, some friendly little clouds, and a majestic snowcapped peak. And, uniquely, in the fore ground a leaning tree on the precipice of toppling but stubborn against what I have always imagined is a fall afternoon (more on this later). This is the one thing I would take with me to a deserted island. Some might think the letter I received from Judy Blume in response to a book I wrote when I was young would be more treasured, this painting tops even that. Sidenote: my brother has said letter and it hangs in his home, not for what it is but what it means. That’s a story for another time.

To the painting at hand, this is what I can tell you as fact, the rest is from memory. And, as we know, memory is unreliable and in this instance, I am happy for that. The painting was created at the hands of one Daniel Ross. I have his contact information from long ago, stamped into the frame of the painting. Remember this is prior to the Internet age so no email and no comfortable way to talk with the artist without a godforsaken phone call or even a written correspondence, I do have a P.O. Box. I have considered contacting him at various points in my life but often found the exercise counter to the memory I have of the day which is in the experience and the two things I remember him saying during our short but significant time together.

With the recent release of Stranger Things 3, a generation of people have been able to see the cultural significance and capitalistic focal points malls came to be in the early 80’s. They were magical. Commerce all around you. Families, singles on the hunt, troops of young people sparring and shopping; days spent in a carnival like atmosphere with dayglow marquees, food courts, and the oddities of the day. It was like everyone getting their very own Vegas in their backyard. Not today’s Vegas but the stylized, architectural wonder of the 1960’s strip, Frank’s Vegas. 

My family lived just a 20-minute drive away from our wonderland, Northgate mall. A thriving, sprawling mall with anchor stores of JcPenny and Sears. This is the mall I believe it to have been-remember memory is unreliable-and I likely associate by fascination with art with Northgate because it is where I spent my teen years. Friends and I shopping, sparring, and generally being introduced to young adulthood—I wouldn’t say the Mall, with a capital M, developed who I am today, any more than Humbert Meats where I use to buy popcorn and Mt. Dew after I got out of school.

Back then malls sponsored events, shows, activities; anything to bring consumers in and peruse the latest offerings of its 100 plus stores. I suppose it was a routine Saturday, nothing out of the ordinary, just out with the family. Routine for us but extraordinary for the mall with its art event/show. Painting and prints as far as the eye can see. If you have ever been to New York, walking up and down Broadway gives you the same sensation. It so happens some artists were live painting during this event. Enter Daniel Ross. I remember nothing about him. Best I can remember he was a man with an easel, a side table of paints, and a blank canvas.

I must have been drawn to him for some reason, likely because he was seated with paints and a blank canvas in front of him. I don’t remember the intervening moments, and I am sure he didn’t narrate his process, like another artist with a similar last name, but I do remember it started with blue. Fanning the blue from top to bottom. Applied thick at first and then in sharp strokes across the canvas left to right, the blue faded to white. This went on for a few minutes and then his choice of weapon changed. Reaching for his palette knife, sharp applications of white and smeared in sweeping strokes and a moment later the outline of mountains appeared. As he adds shading and depth, dashes of black mixed with the white, white mixed with blues, green mixed with black. Applied in dabs, pokes, smears, exaggerated by knifes, brushes and the tip of his pinky finger, the paint dried into the form of trees, bushes, a smooth reflective lake. On and on.

I stood transfixed, off to his right. Asking questions, watching, and swinging a key on one of those curly key chains middle schoolers wear around their wrist and exactly same as the one I keep my mailbox key on today. It feels good to have something of your own at that age.

This seems in retrospect to have gone on for hours. I can’t say why my parents allowed me to be so engrossed. Why they didn’t pull me away? At one point, I can’t say exactly when, maybe when he started adding more detail, Daniel leaned back and asked that I stop twirling the key. It may have been distracting, he may have just wanted to stop my juvenile ass from screwing up his painting. I acquiesced and maybe he felt my frustration because then he looked back and asked me about the trees. This being the second and last time he spoke to me but also the first time I contributed to a painting, would I like the tree to appear as if it is falling? Maybe not those exact words, that’s how I speak. Maybe not falling but cocked at a 30-degree angle, as if a strong wind had partially shifted the well rooted tree. I remember not hesitating. Looking back on it I can’t say why I agreed to this but only in that I got to contribute and maybe also, I didn’t know you could do that. Create a world, take control of a world you oversaw. And, suppose it ruined the painting? Anyone that has taken even a moment to look at it often comments singularly on that tree. That one anomaly in an otherwise non-descript painting. 

And while I never picked up a brush, made a color suggestion, or mixed paints, that painting was now mine. It was always going to be mine and my parents somehow understood this. When was the last time they had seen me sit still for hours at the age of 6? What six-year-old spends an afternoon watching a painting be created in absolute silence. Maybe they hoped it would continue to keep me silent or maybe they saw something in my experience screaming for me to remember these few hours. Or maybe in their infinite adult wisdom, they themselves were never transfixed by something, never had the same wonderment or attention on something so ordinary but they bought it for me. I have no idea how much it cost. We didn’t have a lot of money but I guess enough or enough to make sure I didn’t forget this moment.

And, that really is the magic of this painting. Not in subject matter or quality but in the totality of my experience experiencing it being created. There is a label on the back of the painting. I am not sure if it was pre-prepared, typed on the spot, or if the painting I own is a facsimile of the one I watched created. Maybe you can make it out but its message is lost to the intervening 36 years since its creation. 

No matter what it says, no matter what it means, it pales in comparison to the memory I will always carry with me. I have never shared this story generally, only with friends and family. I have never asked my parents about it and I have never tracked down the artist. I don’t want the story in my head to be tarnished by exacting details, dollar amounts, or context. I want to remember it just as I remember it. Memories, good or bad, are really the only things I carry around with me. So, while it would be nice to have my home on a desert island or just this painting. I carry it with me always. The memory of things that carry memories. And, this my friends, make it very easy for me to be stuck on a deserted island with nothing but myself and this painting. Memories beget memories and I can spiral from this singular painting to the many years in between present and past, reconstructing them with how I remember them, good and bad. Possibly the melancholic moment of knowing I wouldn’t be able to create memories from memories ever again is the real tragedy, not me being stuck on a deserted island with a painting and no wall.