CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XIX: Yesteryears

“Perspective,” Aunt Laurel said. “It’s all about perspective. And I’m not talking about where you’re standing or where you’re looking. I’m talking about who you are.”

Brendon stared at her uncomprehendingly.

Aunt Laurel shook her head, but with a grin on her face as she swept blue braids back from her ears and pinned them in place with a maroon scarf. “What do you see when you look? Where do your eyes go?”

From the kitchen, Mom laughed. “I see the crumbs from breakfast and the spills from Brendon making cinnamon sugar.”

Aunt Laurel called back, “And I see those beautiful candles you poured and have sitting on the hutch.” Then she looked at Brendon expectantly.

“I… Uh.” He looked toward the kitchen opening, though all he could see was a fraction of the fridge and the cabinets starting beyond it. The cabinets where the stain had pulled up color in the shape of an upside-down stegosaurus. “I see the magnets I use to make Mom laugh,” he said quietly.

Aunt Laurel clapped her hands once in excitement and then leaned forward conspiratorially. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Each of us see something different, though we’re all of us looking at the same thing. So whose eyes are you going to look through when you draw your next picture?” Continue reading →

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

XVIII: Yesteryears

When Brendon bought his first canvas—cheap, came in a package of ten—he sat in front of his easel and stared at the white for an hour. He’d mix a color on his plastic palette, dip his brush, hold it aloft, then frown, consider, and clean the brush off. Chewed on the end of the handle until the red paint of the plastic flecked off into his mouth.

He had nothing to show but wasted paint when his mom came to tell him it was dinner time. Shame crept into his soul, prickly pain that poked and prodded at places he didn’t understand.

All around his room hung cars—Firebirds and Camaros and Le Mans, close-ups of engines and exercises of chassis—and superheroes—spandex and magical swords and high tech gadgets—but none of them inspired him. Not like they did Casey or Robbie.

That night, he ended up painting a vase with daffodils and tulips as a mother’s day gift. His mom liked it enough she hung it in the entranceway, right where every visitor would see it, where every knocking stranger couldn’t miss.

The tulips had been lopsided, the daffodils all facing the same direction and the vase had a mistake in perspective along the left-side’s curve. But only Brendon saw these things. The abundance of flaws, his mother called it, right before she kissed his forehead and told him that she had an abundance of flaws too and didn’t he still love her?

He did. So he made her more: a crescent moon over a hay field (hung in the dining room), the swing she’d had under an ancient sycamore growing up (her bedroom), her vanity in shades of gold and gray where she claimed magic happened, more with each passing year (propped against the very same vanity). The highchair Brendon and each of his siblings before him had used, now empty and clean, waiting for grandchildren in the back of the downstairs closet (kitchen, naturally).

Every one had an abundance of flaws. And every one was perfect.

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