The Painted House

Today Sue and her 22-year-old Guatemalan assistant Alan (or “Tattoo” as she’s nicknamed him. not for the ink on his arms but for his diminutive stature, even though he’s nowhere near as short as was Herves Villachaise) started painting the downstairs bedroom. I picked them up in town this morning and when I walked into her little house, I saw the template of the mural she was planning to do on the bedroom wall propped above her couch, artfully crafted on a piece of plywood. Whoa! It was astounding -- a painted mosaic sun glowing with golds and gingers and roses juxtaposed on alternating sun-washed rays of turqoise and blue. It was more than I’d hoped for and I couldn’t wait for them to get started.
I brought Sue and Tattoo home and they worked all day, prepping and planning and designing and ultimately painting. It’s going to look amazing! Our hope is to have her work her way through the entire house, upstairs and down, and make the whole thing a piece of living art. The bathroom is next, the kitchen, the family room, upstairs . . . It’s so much fun and the cool thing is that Sue involves us on all levels of the work – conceptualization, color, painting, modification. She’s insistent that we all help paint and put ourselves into the art as well. When we told Wilder he was going to be painting with Sue he said, “Let me go get my paint brush!” He’s already helped lay foundation color and tomorrow we all get to help with the design. Sue taught painting for 20 years and her philosophy is “Wax on, wax off.” Everything is malleable, she reminds us, and she’s got enough confidence and little enough ego to change or embellish anything at anytime. When she’s done at the end of the day, she leaves her paints and brushes for us so we can paint pieces of the mural as we desire. So when we’re inspired, we just walk into the room, pick up a brush, and paint the wall! We’re all having great fun following the process where it leads.