Timothy Willard
12 min read
I was always afraid to paint. Not houses but canvases. I have a few hunches as to why.
Well, maybe just one. I believed I was an impostor.
In elementary school, everyone’s an artist. You can smear white finger paint on black construction paper, and your fourth-grade teacher will exclaim, “Timmy, this is so wonderful.” A fourth grader doesn’t know who Van Gogh is; they just see his “The Starry Night,” know it’s famous, or, rather, are told that it is and move on to recess. Then comes high school.
High school turns that once-carefree schoolboy into an anxious teenager. Recess somehow disappears, replaced by gym class and organized sports. It also introduces the strange phenomenon of the Teenage Tribes. And they form right before your eyes, and you’re unsure: Am I in the Sports Tribe, the Drama Tribe or the Smoking Cigarettes Behind the School Before Homeroom Tribe? Can you belong to two tribes? Three?
Museum of New Zealand; Unsplash
But you never ask whether the tribes are real or whether someone has superimposed them, like your geometry teacher used to do with that blasted overhead projector and the transparencies he’d draw triangles and half-circles on. Maybe the tribes are like one of those transparencies society keeps drawing circles on, labeling them tribes and blinding you with the projector light. And you never really knew that you just had to unplug the projector to see the light of the real world.
I managed to achieve Tribe Drifter status. It’s official. Trust me. I played football, volleyball, sang in Chamber Choir and sang “Rockin’ in the Free World” with the Smoking Cigarette Tribe for the Senior Talent Show, only to discover they were mislabeled and should have been called the Generally Awesome Tribe of Misfit Toys.
But there was one tribe I didn’t drift into: the Artist Tribe. I was more of an associate liaison. Many of my friends belonged to this tribe. Most of them were excellent students, had a locked-in aesthetic — you know, “the look” — and were superb draftsmen. Several were also cheerleaders; one would become our valedictorian, and another our top vocalist. The Artist Tribe glowed with an ephemeral aura, as if they lived in the light of a perpetual golden hour.
I should have heeded the Cigarette Tribe’s tip-off: not everything is as it seems. Belonging wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but something more like natural gravitation. Interestingly, there was not a Writer Tribe. If there was, no one talked about it. I was the only one, as far as I knew. After all, when you’re a sixth grader busing into the new middle school, and you’ve chosen to try being a “prep,” the last thing you want to do is announce your love for Robert Frost’s poetry.
That sixth-grade year, when Mrs. Wilson made us memorize “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” marked the beginning of the Writing Tribe for me. And when I rolled up at Warwick High School as a freshman, the world opened up. Because there stood Mr. Liepovitch, the ninth-grade English teacher and offensive line coach, reading “The Merchant of Venice” aloud, his booming voice projecting through his massive chest like thunder across the sky. I realized then that big, burly men could and did enjoy Shakespeare.
But did anyone else enjoy writing? I took Advanced Composition as a junior, but the class was full of good students who wanted the weighted grade. No one seemed interested in Shakespeare, Frost or writing their own poems — so far as I could tell. I dropped my journalism class because the teacher seemed only interested in complaining and encouraging the students to do the same. Didn’t anyone else actually want to be Shakespeare?
I didn’t know what the Renaissance was then and how it encouraged a broad reading of, well, all aspects of life (studia humanitatis), all the subjects that make up what we now call the humanities. And I certainly didn’t realize that few people were Tribe Drifters or what I now know as Renaissance People — people who care less about tribalism and more about sucking all the marrow out of life.
Life as I knew it then felt like an endless hall of unlocked doors, each with the sign: Come in, stay a while. All, that is, except for painting. That door had Van Gogh standing outside it, limiting entry to candidates who could sketch well or sculpt, or who were driven by some demon or angel to fling their hearts all over the walls. I’m not saying that’s what artists, painters and sculptors are. I’m saying that’s how my high school soul interpreted this elite tribe. No one told me that it wasn’t really Van Gogh standing outside the door, limiting access. But instead, it was someone from the Cigarette Tribe disguised as the earless painter, playing a prank.
But the prank worked! I walked past that door for years, then decades, until I realized my dream of writing for a living. And then one day — actually, it was a Friday evening — my 8-year-old middle daughter, Brielle (I have three), grabbed my hand and pulled me into the schoolroom.
“Daddy, do you want to watercolor with me?”
Sometimes the world makes more sense when we give up trying to make it make sense.
There I was, a 40-something man, standing once again at the Artist Tribe door, guarded by Van Gogh. But this time I had the secret password: my daughter. Van Gogh took one look at her, pulled off his mask, winked, walked away and lit a cigarette. He looked strangely like Brian Zorn from the Smoking Cigarette Tribe. Brielle and I walked through the door hand in hand and painted for several hours. We experimented with colors, accidentally taught ourselves how to do a watercolor wash, cut up watercolor paper, laughed a lot, played loud music and snacked on chips the whole time. I looked over my shoulder just to see if that doorway and hallway were still there, if “Van Gogh” had returned after his smoke.
Nothing.
I smiled and never looked back.
The next day, fall spilled in spectacular suffusions all over the morning. I made chocolate chip pancakes, brewed several French presses of coffee, sat in front of the picture window in the breakfast nook, taped a large sheet of watercolor paper to the table and painted for six hours straight. Everything I painted was awful.
One of my friends is a professional watercolorist. I found one of her pieces and tried to copy it. It was awful.
I tried again. Just bad. And again. Same result. But did I care? No. I was entranced and enchanted all at once.
Bri painted with me briefly after eating the chocolate chip pancakes, then went outside to play. I painted for so long that I tried painting the backyard trees and lawn and the fading sunlight casting long shadows to the edge of our property.
Hmmm, not bad, actually.
The next day, we painted again in the evening. This time, Lyric and Zion joined us. We did it again the next night. And slowly, a ritual formed. Good snacks, good music. No television. I bought more supplies, so we all had our own.
I researched hog-hair brushes, squirrel-hair brushes and what makes the best watercolor paper. I landed on Arches, a French brand. Of course it was French. I looked over my shoulder to see if Van Gogh had returned. He was smoking on my back porch.
We did the same thing every night for six months straight. We never missed a day. The rhythm of our house changed. A year passed. Then two. I watercolored little mini-washes of skyscapes for my daughters and put them in their lunches on the days they attended co-op. I wrote a love note on the back.
And then something happened.
I got daring. I wanted to paint on large watercolor paper, the kind measured in feet, not inches. I found the paper in Asheville, North Carolina, just a few hours from our house. But I didn’t own an easel, so I searched Craigslist. Only one listing appeared, with a single photo of a massive 9-foot easel. The seller was a former art teacher and, as I’d later learn, a professional landscape oil painter. The easel had been custom-made on commission for the art program at Davidson College, just north of us, near Lake Norman. I called the number, and the owner, a hospitable, quiet-voiced retired woman, invited me to her studio to have a look.
I took Brielle with me. And I borrowed my neighbor’s trailer. We arrived at her home studio. She owned several large easels and needed to downsize. She was asking $180. I offered $100. We settled on $120.
Brielle and I drove home, smiling. Should we stop and buy some large canvases? But we don’t have enough paint. Should we — wait? Should I try oils?
The thought seemed illegal to my brain. But Van Gogh wasn’t in the back seat shaking his finger. I was free to buy oils, a canvas, some brushes.
But canvases? That would be too expensive.
I’ll get some oak boards at Lowe’s. And I’ll paint with a putty knife.
I ended up painting with an actual knife. And so began the next part of my painting journey: oils, on a 9-foot creaky easel that I must keep in our living room because it doesn’t fit anywhere else. The journey continues. Eight years on — or thereabouts.
The easel greets me every morning, inviting me, as it does, with its height and promise of delight, as do the dozens of canvases strewn about our living-room-turned-studio. My wife has come to love it. There’s no television downstairs, just books, oil paintings and painting supplies.
“The Inviter wants to show you the cosmos and your place in it. The Accuser wants you to believe you have no place at all. ”
And this morning, a large 62-by-48-inch canvas calls me over. It’s primed with a cadmium-free orange and Naples yellow underlay, begging to be blocked in with the sky I’m envisioning.
Do I accept the invitation, or do I have tea with the Accuser?
Friends and family who visit tell me to sell my paintings. And the thoughts roil up, familiar thoughts: That’s not really your tribe, Tim. You’re an impostor. You’re a writer, not Van Gogh (who’s, again, smoking out back). And what happens? I build a web store but don’t tell anyone. For years.
I believe the lie that there are special people and not-so-special people in life, some meant for greatness, even tragic greatness, and some for, well, not-so-greatness. I believed painting was only for people who could draw well. You could probably apply this lie to myriad vocations. We don’t try something because we disqualify ourselves before we pick up a brush and try painting a hundred landscapes. The lie changes to match the occasion. So if you get past the first round of impostor lies, it will re-form itself into something else accusatory. Brielle’s invitation to paint broke through the first impostor barrier. But then it transmogrified into: You’re not good enough.
And this morning I work hard to fight off these thoughts. And they sound strangely serpentine. And the words? As if from Eden:
You will not die.
The Devil was not accusing Eve. He was accusing God to Eve. He flipped God’s “you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17, ESV) to “You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4, ESV). And it’s his favorite trick. Someone you love and trust tells you: “Tim, you should ... move to Atlanta to pursue a writing career.” This was an actual visit from a friend who knew me, was kindred and cared enough to challenge me to take a step of faith, leave my hometown and see what the opportunity held.
The Accuser stood there and accused me:
You should not ... because that’s really not who you are. Not really. There’s nothing for you there. Stay here where life is familiar. Everything is dialed in. After all, who do you think you are?
He accused me, then, before my writing career unfolded, of being a fraud, of not being good enough.
But I got past that threshold — with the help of friends and family who knew me, who loved me. They were my Brielle, holding my hand as we walked past the dragon at the gate.
Then, another threshold, another gate.
“Tim, you should ... sell your paintings.”
The Accuser is the dragon at the gate. And he hates the me I’m intended to be. And his annihilation of that me resumes, this time, in a different register. But same words: You should not ... You don’t belong in that tribe. Stay safe, right here. Plus, you’re not even that good.
Why would the Accuser care whether I write, paint or play volleyball? Why would he care if I find a group of friends who share the same interests and encourage me to do the things they see and know set my heart on fire? The truth is, he doesn’t care. He can’t. The only thing he can do is flip what is and what can be into something that stalls and never becomes what its potential holds. He can only argue like a child: no, it’s not; no, it isn’t; no, it won’t.
The transparency on the overhead projector is really a violence aimed at you.
Remember that overhead projector? Imagine the transparency overlay now as a kind of active framework at work in your mind, with the Dragon Accuser scribbling all over who you really are with words and phrases and ideas that seem true. These scribbles begin to dictate what you say about yourself, how you act and what you attempt to do. This active framework comes from a living spirit — the Dragon Accuser — who hates who you are because you reflect the Creator.
God created you to enjoy good things, good works and good rewards. But the Dragon Accuser wants only to destroy you, not through sudden annihilation. He wants to destroy you by dismantling who you are, piece by piece, action by action.
And to serve his purposes, he distorts friendship. He sows small divisions in the world. He takes the very idea of friendship and turns it inside out. Our natural friend groups gather around the same delights. The Accuser, however, fabricates a counterfeit: an exclusive inner circle we think we want to join, but that is empty inside. But he hides his scheme by calling you an impostor. That’s his whole plan: to replace true relationships — the real relationships God designed so we might spur one another on toward love and good deeds — with a shallow substitute.
And here’s his secret playbook.
He lures you with your innate desire to be accepted into inner circles that don’t really care about you as a person. Those inner circles turn friendship into a status game. And once you’re not that important anymore, well, what good are you? But say you make it past the lure of the inner circle. Do you think the Dragon Accuser just calls it quits? No, he pivots, writing Impostor all over that blasted transparency: You have nothing to offer, and anything you try to do is worthless. Your participation in this world is meaningless.
And here’s the hard truth I learned about his ways. I learned I was not his victim. I was either his opponent or his advocate. For years I was his advocate. I didn’t pursue painting at all for decades. I built the web store and told no one. And being his advocate didn’t mean I enlisted in hell’s program. That’s not how he works. He doesn’t want to convert me to him. He’s not recruiting Satanists. He’s happy to simply knock people off course.
But the Dragon Accuser’s secret playbook is powerless against the real enchantment of this life: invitation. The Inviter presents this enchantment and offers me and you a pathway. But the pathway demands hard things of us — and only we can decide to take it all on. What will we do?
The Inviter wants to show you the cosmos and your place in it. The Accuser wants you to believe you have no place at all. The Inviter says, Come, lose yourself in me, and you will find yourself. The Accuser offers you Turkish delight — the indulgent sweets the White Witch offered to Edmund to knock him off course, off the hard path Aslan had for him. With those sweets, she offers power and status, and promises anything you want right now. And the price? Your soul.
The Inviter doesn’t offer indulgence. But goodness. He says:
Come and see.
Come and taste.
Open the door, and I will come in and join you.
Even Job, when hope was all but extinguished, cries out to God for the world to make sense, and receives an invitation: Come with me and behold wonders untold and power unmatched. The Dragon Accuser wants to make our world wonderless, tasteless and myopic. But the Inviter intends something different. And for me, now, every day, I find his “something different” in the greeting of my rickety old easel. It is not just pieces of wood sitting in my family room; it’s a cosmic invitation to participate. And I have found this to be the language of the universe.
Come to me, and I will give you rest.
Take, eat; this is my body.
Drink, this is my blood.
Be my friend. Friendship is an invitation.
The Inviter makes the world small so you can grasp its immensity. Think of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien reading their manuscripts to each other. Their small gathering was the first audience for Narnia and Middle-earth — whole worlds of wonder.
Come, paint so that you can see my sky and show the world. Come, listen to my thought of you in prayerful reflection as I remind you how I made you, wove you, delighted in you, poured wisdom into you.
I’d always dreamed about unplugging my geometry teacher’s overhead projector, to rid myself of the glare of those scribbled-on transparencies. And by answering the invitation, I have. I know now that whenever a breath of fear is whispered, the Dragon Accuser is there. But if I find the courage to open the hallway door, the Inviter is on the other side, Van Gogh at his side.
Timothy Willard is a writer, theologian, artist, creative consultant and independent scholar. He has authored four books, including the critically acclaimed Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. Millions have read Timothy’s inspirational writing, which has been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Patheos, Acculturated, The Huffington Post and more. As a creative consultant and ghostwriter, Timothy has worked on 30 books with clients ranging from Chick-fil-A, Q Ideas, International Mission Board, Hobby Lobby and Coca-Cola Consolidated to NYT bestselling authors, Grammy Award-winning artists and former NFL MVPs. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and three daughters.