photo: jetheriot
Back when I still did dot-to-dots, I would connect the dots very straightforwardly, all sharp angles, no tasteful rounding of the contours. It never dawned on me that there could be another point to the exercise besides robotically tracing a path from the first dot to the second dot to the third dot, et cetera, in order to “discover” the answer to the puzzle. I say “discover” because you can usually tell what the answer is before you’ve made your first pencil mark. I remember one dot-to-dot in particular. A pair of googly eyes way up high on the top of the page, already filled in, floated above a long neck-shaped pattern of dots which led to a larger cluster of dots sprouting four skinny legs near the bottom of the page. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to guess what animal it was. Turning a thinly disguised dotted giraffe into – you guessed it – a giraffe: where was the drama in that? I traced my giraffe with all the shapeliness of a mathematical calculation. I remember the teacher’s aide laughing as she showed it to the teacher. I remember feeling ashamed. It was second grade, the same year I lost half of a hippopotamus-shaped eraser up my nose never to be seen again. I think it was the head-half.
Today, when I paint, I paint the same way, precisely, surgically. I’ve mapped out exactly where I want every color to go before I even begin. If I’m painting an oak branch and the painting is lovely, it’s not because of the brush strokes. The paint is flat and untextured, laid down in pre-planned blocks of color. It’s because I’ve exactly mimicked the loveliness of the branch’s silhouette, staying within the lines like an expertly executed paint-by-number.