Martha Hess
When asked how long painting has been a part of my life, I say since 2004, the year SARS broke out in China and promptly closed the door on the Hess family’s plans to visit that country. We were teaching at the Loomis Chaffee School and had received a generous sabbatical that afforded travel in Spain, South Africa, and Vietnam. But that March morning, with a nor’easter in the forecast, I was venturing no further than our mailbox.
But my husband was. My daughter had an appointment in Philadelphia that day, so she and her father insisted on braving the drive. Alone in an empty house (we were between labs that year), I felt too distracted to read. I guess it was worry that compelled me to open a set of oil paints given to me years earlier and used only once before.
That morning I knew nothing about values and perspective, color mixing, or design. But I did have a photo of the marketplace in Ho Chi Minh City that looked like a fun picture to paint. So I poured myself a cup of coffee and set sail into hours of quiet concentration on shapes, spaces, and color harmonies. I will never part with that first painting.
Those early dabs of burnt umber and ultramarine have led to myriad experiments and glad journeys on canvas. That first morning’s venture in painting happened, in part, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And though I like to think that my hours at the easel have yielded greater knowledge, a fresh canvas—and sometimes a former painting that now seems incomplete—can feel, depending on my mood, like an invitation or a dare. No matter. It’s all an adventure, an ongoing adventure I feel fortunate to have in my life.
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