I got lost in the deep shadows under the squinty eyes creased by laughter. Felt myself trace the long black braids cutting through the swirls of colorful fabric. I’m painting a lifetime, I thought, as I dipped my brush into black ink and moved towards the page.
For me, being an artist is about the space between myself and my subject, in this case fifty-two year old “Maman” Annette*, as we sit across the table from each other, staring, for two hours. As I spread a thin coat of ink across the page to form the smooth skin around her neck, she peers down to see her portrait. Sometimes she smiles, sometimes she breaks into a huge grin and laughs out load, shaking her head. Sometimes her eyes flutter closed, tired perhaps from a late night of caring for the sixteen young orphan teenagers who make up her “new” family. Especially tired because she has been sitting besides the bed of one who is sick. Sometimes she stares off into the distance.
Occasionally we speak. In bits of English, French, and Kinyarwanda, she shows me pictures of her family. She makes a telephone call to her daughter, Nelly*, only a year younger than me, to tell her she is having her portrait drawn. There is one photograph, an old black-and-white one with the year 1978 written on the back, that she cradles tenderly. I learn that it is a picture of her and her older sister who is holding a little baby. She points to the baby and in a mixture of languages tells me it is her son. She writes on a paper four other names. My children. Then she proceeds to tell me where they are. Nelly is in
She looks at the finished painting afterward and nods, a smile spreading wide.
Together, we have created more than a picture of a face. In ink and color and line and shape, a reflection of a lifetime.
for LP
