Gains and Losses
Last year, Susan reached out to me about restoring the murals I painted for her residence. It didn’t seem like an urgent request.
She initially hired me to paint her retaining walls in 2008. Susan had the idea that painting a landscape mural on her retaining walls would give the basement a view. It might be hard to imagine, but this was before Instagram. Encountering mural art meant you were probably standing inside either a Trader Joes or Fry’s Electronics (remember Fry’s?). It was an era in mural art when even uttering the word “mural” would have jeopardized the career of any respectable Bay Area interior designer.
Then again, Susan was different.
When we first met, she had just purchased a fledgling content company called YouTube for Google, a gambit which flew in the face of all conventional market wisdom and put her own career in peril. Susan had a steady, calm trust in her ideas, even as she made plenty of space for others to weigh in and share their viewpoint. During the six mural projects I completed at their house, Susan and I became friends and, at some point, workout buddies. We would meet at 7am, two days a week with her personal trainer, which we kept up for three years until she was pregnant with her fifth child. Susan was a truly amazing individual, and seeing her life up close (i.e., a chaotic kitchen launching four kids off to school at 7:30 am) only deepened my respect for her. I remember once at the end of a workout, I asked her what she thought was the secret to her success.
Susan was understated. She had a quiet, wry sense of humor. She was thoughtful and concise with her words and she offered me three brilliant insights in response to my question. Unfortunately, I can only remember one: I just keep showing up.
It was funny and understated like Susan, but that nugget of wisdom has stuck with me. Some days I am plagued with paralyzing self doubt. Lately there has been a few extra scoops of fear on top of that about where humanity is headed in general. It’s tempting to imagine hiding under the safety of my bed covers for an indefinite amount of time. I am rowing a little gentler down the stream than I used to, but Susan’s pithy advice has not left me: keep showing up.
When Susan reached out last summer about restoring their murals, I was in the middle of a busy painting spell. Let me get to this when things settle down. A few months later, I heard of her passing.
Last month, as I was restoring the mural outside of her daughter’s bedroom, I was struck by Susan’s prescience. The people Susan employed to help her around her house are all, without exception, extraordinary humans. I always loved working at Susan’s house because of the genuine, warm care that everyone involved seemed to bring to the scene, from the gardeners to the house manager. Susan wasn’t there this time, but the web of love and support she built around her family was still there. I felt honored to be an instrument of her continued care for her family through my artwork.
I thought the restoration would be quick. Powerwash the walls, add back in the darkest colors and warm tones which are the first to fade, and re-varnish with a UV protectant. Rinse. Repeat. What I underestimated is how much I have matured as an artist since I first painted Susan’s murals 17 years ago. Back then, I was vague even on the basics, like where the horizon line might be. I had a smaller vocabulary of plants and clouds to paint from, and they were more artificial, formed by imagination not observation. I hadn’t worked out fully the math problem of sunlight, how colors in the shadows change, the halo of orange it would create on a squirrel’s back. I didn’t yet understand how to craft the composition to tell a story, with a rhythm and harmony that worked together.
Working on this project was an encounter with my younger self. I remembered how thrilled I was to have work as an artist, painting my magnum opus of 2008. I remembered how tickled I was to hear my own kid’s voices in the cacophony of joy on the playground at recess at the school over Susan’s back fence. I remember listening to “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” on my ipod during this project, a 30 hour self-improvement seminar that I had ripped from loaned CD’s. I remember sometimes when I leaned down for more paint my corded earbuds would fall out of my ear and right into the paint bucket. Splat. Wipe it down a bit, stick it right back into my ear. And… repeat.
Once onsite, I realized I couldn’t just add a few touches here and there. I wanted to use all of the skills I had developed. I wanted to create a grounded rhythm of colors and shape that would cohere to represent both sanctuary and possibility. I was also careful not to paint over the butterflies her children had added. She would have appreciated that. What I thought would take two days took two weeks.
I am grateful to Susan for her support of my art, even as I was still developing my creative voice. I am grateful to have raced around the track so many early mornings with such a consistent workout partner. We rolled our eyes at the shared pain of the day’s workout agenda and giggled over situps and whatnots. Knowing Susan has been a gift to my life, and I am deeply grateful to have known her.
With love,
Morgan
