Lessons From Childhood

Jenny Lyon, Ophelia, graphite on paper, 2013, *after Millais

Lesson 1: Float
Part I

What if Ophelia could float? How would things be different if she could float through the difficult passages in her life with calm and confidence? Revisiting Shakespeare's character got me thinking.

Ever since my daughter was an infant, I have enrolled her in swimming lessons. The curriculum focuses on developing life - long essential safety skills before teaching strokes. This past fall my daughter passed her water safety exam.

In The Clothes Test the child is repeatedly tossed fully clothed into the deep end of the pool from which she has to rise to the surface unflummoxed, roll over onto her back, float, yell repeatedly for help, swim on her back to the nearest side of the pool, roll over, and climb out.

My daughter spends a lot of time floating on her back, completely confident and calm, enjoying the bouyancy, the rest. It's gotten me thinking and sketching.

Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving But Drowning" is beautiful and poignant. W. H. Auden's poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" is cynical and insightful. But what if those drowning figures had controlled their own situations by floating? One simple skill creates a completely different outcome.

One side note to parents and prospective parents on this climbing - out bit: as a very young infant, my wee babe gained the coordination and strength to climb anything thanks to endless repetitions in the pool. This resulted not only in a water - safe and independent child but also in a significant drop in my art production.

For at least a year, every time silence descended, I would discover my small tot happily perched in some unfathomable, perilous place--proud of her achievement and happy as could be. I gained a confident, capable daughter at the price of producing a little less art of my own. Fortunately, now four, she's discovered that, yes, gravity does apply to her. And the studio is whirring once more.

So, here's my Ophelia:
Not Drowning But Floating.

Good Reads:

1. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

2. "Not Waving But Drowning" by Stevie Smith

3. "Musée des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden

Great Art:

Ophelia by John Everett Millais, oil, Tate Gallery

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel, oil, Museum van Buuren

Quotable:

"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape."

*Anonymous

Jenny Lyon Studios

1790 Highlands View SE

Smyrna, Georgia 30082
www.JennyLyonStudios.com
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