Christina Ireland
I Paint
November, 2015

Time in this world is so very limited, yet when I find time, my time is spent with paint. But before brush meets canvas, a concept must be born: creativity flows, the brain ejaculates stray ideas and absent meanderings, and a twinkle is born in the artist’s eye. Blank canvas sits before them, similar to my parents’ expectations of what having a family would be like after my birth. Their marriage becomes the eraser for every mistake they drew on that canvas, despite the haphazard outline of my soon-to-be family. Eventually, paint is poured from its tubes onto the pallet, the foundationary colours of my morals emitting from the adolescent media served to me through television screens. The bristles dip into the messy waters of divorce, emerging in a clean, new chapter in mine and my parents’ lives. A glance at the pallet proves it to now be as messy as my family, yet everything on the canvas proves imperfectly beautiful. Fingers blend and mold the last details of the artwork, the very last ideas to be left with me in my high school career forming. This last connection with the canvas is coveted, for I am used to working through a tool to achieve my ideas. The edges are painted to collect the piece in its entirety, however I neglect to sign the painting. It is unfinished, and I intend to complete it independently when the time comes. When I am allotted time, I must admit, I paint.