An answer to one of my questions...

My paintings arrived about a week ago.  The museum staff helped me to unwrap them and put them against the wall.  Some of the artists were there and others were still arriving.  One artist called me over and asked me to explain one of my paintings.  Many others had already commented on the same one.  Here it is so you know what I am talking about...

Anyway, we started talking.  I thought he was going to say he didn't like it, as a couple of others had.  Well, they didn't say it exactly but they were clearly uncomfortable with the image.  One artist asked, why did you paint that, in this almost disturbed voice.  Someone else told me that the Mauritanians would not like it at all.  I am thinking it has to do with how the figure is sitting--call it a hunch. Anyway, the artist said it was actually his favorite.  He asked me what it was about and yes, why I painted it.  I tried my best to explain the feelings behind this painting..which have become clearer over time for me.  I was searching..for answers, for clarity.  It is never easy to explain a painting for me because they are so very personal.

When I paused, he said, "How did you know you wanted to become an artist?  How did you know you had it in you?"  I looked at him and smiled because I had been wondering the same thing about the Mauritanian artists.  I didn't answer right away and so he began to tell me his story.."When I was very young and going to school, the other children practiced writing the alphabet...but I just wanted to draw people, animals, anything really.  I would sit there at my place and draw and draw.  As I got older, I couldn't figure out why I had this need, this desire to create, to draw things around me.  I thought I was the only one in my family with this interest. It wasn't until my mother lay dying that I learned where this came from.  I spent a lot of time with her during her illness.  One day I was sitting there with her talking about life and our family and she stopped and pointed to the ceiling..she said: "Look up there, I see the clouds and a woman carrying a child.  See the goats and the sheep that stand together?" She was seeing these things in the shapes made by spots and stains that accumulated over time.  It was then I realized that I got my drawing and painting from her."

His mother was perhaps never able to explore her artistic side..most likely because at the time representational  art wasn't being done, the Mauritanian culture and the fact that she was a woman.  His mother gave him some understanding of where it was coming from and I think in some way, permission for him to pursue this talent.