Our friends Helen and Calvin celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary last week. It is the custom of our SLG friends to mark major birthdays and anniversaries with a joint gift from us all. And a 50th Anniversary is certainly a major achievement. But Helen and Calvin requested that we did not buy them a gift. Part of our outing last Saturday would be our gift to them, we were told. Wonder what that meant? We soon found out.
We gathered at the local Art Studio on Saturday afternoon. The idea was that we would all paint a portion of a rose. The parts would get joined together, then the completed painting would be our joint gift to the happy couple. With sorry wails of “but I can’t paint”, echoing around the studio, the art teacher explained how this painting would be achieved. A picture of a golden rose was divided into 12 parts, and we each picked our part, sight unseen. We were then presented with a stretched canvas block. To make it easy for us, the teacher had marked the lines of petals and leaves on the canvas. Armed with a brush and a selection of paint, we sat at our respective easels and got to work.
The concentration in the room was immense as each of us studied our portion of the rose, and dabbed paint onto the canvas. The art teacher circulated around, offering words of wisdom to all of us novice painters. When we had finished we laid each block down on the floor in the correct order. This gave us a general overview and we were could see which particular blocks needed a little extra shading to tie them all together.
Once dried, the 12 canvases will be joined together and will hang on the wall at Helen and Calvin’s home. A joint 50th Anniversary gift painted with love from each and every one of us.
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