The Renaissance

A reflective essay I wrote for my Higher English folio. Its about my dad leaving using the imagery of art throughout.

"The Renaissance"

Art has always fascinated me since my mum introduced me to Warhol’s cans of soup and Alexander McQueen’s abstract dresses. It’s only natural that I’d associate my own emotions with Jackson Pollock’s splats and flicks of paint. The weekend of my dad’s “departure” was the first flick on the blank, innocent canvas. I never imagined the masterpiece that would be created, a masterpiece splattered with a new family dynamic and torn at the edges by toxic friendships.

It didn’t really start as a blank canvas, it was more Motti’s “Magic Ink” (1989). It appeared as a white void but it had already been painted with transparent ink. The invisible ink had been etched into the canvas since I was 4 and was uprooted from East Kilbride with a new attention seeking brother on the way. I was too young and oblivious to notice anyway that my dad was starting to turn into someone I didn’t know.

It wasn’t until a decade later, a month into the first year of high school that the invisible ink came to the surface like accidentally dropping a can of paint, on the ground, from fifty feet above. Suddenly the innocent canvas was no longer void of colour, it had been smeared with a bold red, the biggest splat of the masterpiece. My dad left in his own red Honda. I, being one of the most sensitive humans on this planet, did not take it well. I was distraught, of course, yet I felt full of rage. It was foreign to me, to my family and to my friends. The signs had been there all along inside the invisible ink yet I was only a pre-teen immersed in my own little bubble. It never once dawned my mind that my parents wouldn’t ever be together again. Everything is so easily and falsely coasted in a childish happy bright yellow. A bright yellow that only re-emerged on the artwork until years later.

Everyone has different ways of coping with different situations. My tools of coping became cheap black biro-pens and half chewed pencils. The doodling began on the ‘Notes’ section of my school planner and then spiralled onto English essays, French writing pieces or even the front covers of my Science jotters. It wasn’t very long before my arms became their own separate inky mess of a masterpiece. Black wasn’t only the colour of my uniform, it was etched into my arms too concealing everything I didn’t want to talk about at that time. Except this masterpiece was finished by second year, I wiped my arms clean and life moved on.

First and second year of high was tough. From then on, the art gained flicks and tiny speckles of diverse colours. Sure, my younger brother and I saw my dad a few times each week but then the artwork became ripped by friends. My voice began to lose its presence at our table in the canteen, I was constantly talked over or unable to get a word in. I was the only person at that grey, grainy, dull table missing two parental figures and no one knew how to treat or deal with me. The blue shades that once had been confidence and trust had morphed into passiveness and sadness in the stroke of a paint brush.  My own favourite colour came to represent my grief. So, I grew smaller, forced my words back down my throat and isolated myself, became a ghost in my own masterpiece essentially. I pulled myself from social situations bursting with yellows and oranges, and in turn strained the material of the canvas.

The end of third year into the beginning of fourth year was the worst stage of my life. However, it was to become the most colourful stage of the masterpiece. For the most part of my dad leaving I always felt blue and avoided the topic completely- mainly because I thought it wasn’t worth the waterworks. The memory is as vivid as the bright colours in Andy Warhol’s creations, the night I burst into tears like someone out of a Roy Lichtenstein painting. As a person, I’m increasingly talented at taking on other people’s problems and pushing mine completely off the desk. This is what led to an emotional overload in front of a doctor I’d never spoken to before. The bottled-up emotions turned into a huge mess of contrasting colours spilled all over the accidental masterpiece.

The direction of the artwork started to change as I came to terms with my diagnosis. I dreaded the phone ringing in classes, the sign that I was not getting out of counselling that period. I may have hated every small step physically to the school counsellor, but the advice that I took made the disaster of an art piece look more like a Jackson Pollock painting. I kissed goodbye to the grey, dull canteen table friend group, I stopped having contact with my dad completely and I decided I was going to be me for the first time since S1. The colours brightened gradually from dark oranges to bright yellows and I found a new group of more vibrant friends. Fourth year was hell with exam stress and varying panic attacks, but I gained a new confidence, I gained a new layer of paint. No one ignores me because of my family issues or my mental health issues and I’m truthfully happy for the first time in a long time. I’m no longer that transparent friend I once was, the torn edges are now stuck together with glue.

I’m only fifth year now but I’m hopeful closure from my dad leaving is not too far in the distant future. The masterpiece is almost complete. It’s impossible in the art world to say how long a piece will take; it could be hours, days, months, or years even. Once this masterpiece is finished, another one with begin. I am the canvas to my events and I am the collection of art that is my life.