Picking up My Late Dad’s Painting Hobby Helps Me Connect With Him

It has been 15 months since my father, who spent his usual Sunday cycle with friends, never returned home. This cannot be an essay detailing how I overcome my grief – No. It also won't be an essay that helps understand the senselessness of losing someone decades before they should have passed on. It still doesn't make sense to me. Instead, I will write about art. My father's art. And mine, albeit new.

My father was (the past tense still makes my fingers ache a little and makes me want to press “backspace” and replace it with “is”) a doctor. He had thousands of patients who adored him, but his work was only part of everything he did. He was an astronomer. Kitesurfer. Chess genius. And an artist. One day my father took a brush and began studies artusing a little YouTube and a lot of trial and error.

His works were exhibited in art galleries. He sold reproductions of his works. Everything was available to him: landscapes, historical monuments, people, animals… he dabbled in it all. When I visited, I saw his latest work on the dining room table. It never occurred to me to ask him to teach me. I was useless at art and hadn't picked up a brush since my junior high teacher told me I had a lot of passion but little ability.

Something changed, and I also wanted to create art.

Wish learn about art started with the accumulation of my father's paintings. He had a stack of hundreds of them. My mother and I sat together, choosing the photographs we liked and placing them in frames at home. I chose his painting of Eilean Donan in Scotland and the Colosseum in Rome, two places I enjoyed visiting. I also chose a beach landscape with two silhouetted figures that reminded me of my dad and me.

I sat and looked at them for months. Each painting was a piece of time from my father's life. His hands held each page. His brushstrokes left every mark. His eyes chose every color. I always kept a mental list of things to remove from the house if there was a fire. Dad's paintings now top the list.

Two months ago I saw an advertisement for a watercolor painting workshop near me. “Newbies welcome.” I went alone and spent three hours painting a dahlia. A few weeks later I found another studio on the other side of town and painted a Tuscan house among poppies. Then I found a two-day oil painting workshop and took that too, enjoying the challenge of a different technique.

My new hobby helped me feel more connected to my father.

Usually when I find a hobbyI demand immediate perfection or I refuse it. Painting is different. I'm learning slowly. I draw on the experiences of others where possible, in person, and when not, online. I make mistakes, but I make them while holding my dad's brushes (the ones that could have been saved – he didn't take much care to wash them).

I read that losing a parent is feeling homesick it never goes away. This is the best description of grief I have found. Taking on my dad's hobby creates a little bond for him. It doesn't cure homesickness. This does not ease the grief, but on the contrary, it excites him, swirls him around like a cleaning brush in water.

But sometimes that's exactly what I want. I want to sit in the mountain. I hold his brushes, listen to his playlist and do the things he loved to do, knowing that I will never have the privilege of doing them next to him. At the same time, his hand guides mine. Together we create art.