A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

In the Studio
by Linda Carole Fishback
December 7, 2006

The century old window barely diffuses
a morning's early gray winter light.
The room is bathed in an ethereal glow.
The floor boards, damp and cold
beneath my bare and calloused feet.
The wooden easel looms,
a great old ship in the fog.

My hands feel heavy,
my shoulders sag, weighted by the journey ahead;
my fingers barely feel
my brush, my luggage dangling there.
My eyes, straining past recent sleep, squint up
at the great sail, a canvas before me, white, blank and silent.
It waits.

A cloud of turpentine and linseed floats,
asented memory hovers near the beams.
A mother painting in
a kitchen,
a rusted coffee can of brushes,
a stained and tattered rang hangs over its edge
while the child watches from
a table. I stand just as you stood;
I ponder just as you did;
I reach out, I retreat,
I feel your uncertainty, was it dread?
I feel the pull, demand of paint,
the bleeding bristles
canvas to weep into.
About the author:
A nontraditional college student in the final lap of an art degree while raising a 7 year old, volunteering on political campaigns, pursuing photography and commission art and desperate to make a liberal thumbprint on the landscape.