A Work of Art

My great-uncle Art was an interesting character.  In part, because he was married to great-aunt Emily who was an even more interesting character.  Aunt Emily’s ability to cause upset in the family and talk people into situations they never expected to get into was legendary.  But, I’ll save her for another day.

Uncle Art was long-suffering.  He seemed to be able to ignore lots of things about Aunt Emily that others found annoying.  He was a smoker, and she wanted him to quit.  He would go outside thinking she didn’t know it was for a smoke.  She pretended not to know.  If she happened outside, he would stuff the cigarette up his sleeve running the risk of torching himself.

Uncle Art was a painter by trade.  He wasn’t exactly an artist, but neither was he the run-of-the-mill-slap-paint-on-the-wall type.  He was expert at painting gym floors in the days when all those lines were hand-painted.

Aunt Emily had a bedroom suite that I’m sure Uncle Art must have hand-painted.  It was shades of pastel pink and blue and had gold edges.  I thought it was beautiful and have never seen anything quite like it.  It made me think of pink-tinged clouds in a pale blue sky.  I have no idea what happened to it after they passed away.

Uncle Art could color beautifully with crayons.  He didn’t just take a green crayon and color the leaves on the trees in a coloring book.  He used multiple shades of green, and the tree came alive.  When he finished, the picture really was a work of art and a work of Art.

I wonder if there is another woman in the world who as a girl asked her uncle to color a page in her coloring book when she got a new one.  When he colored a page in my book, I felt like I had a special treasure.  I wonder what else he might have done with his life, if he had been born at a different time and place with different opportunities.