![she attracted strays, shunned niceties, defied boredom, painted until her hands wouldn’t paint then did crazy things with watercolor markers, did crazy things overall, the whole time, rode a horse into the ocean to see how it would feel, blasted jazz in the deep dark night, burned down the world,got sober at seventy-eight years of age, knew everything about major league baseball, would not step one foot out-of-doors without her eyebrows done, would rather crawl than use some crutch, had inexhaustible senses of fashion and humor, didn’t mind letting you know she was a genius,really did see beauty everywhere, really saw it, sometimes we would stand together and look at a dusty shelf or the purple mesh bag that held the clementines, in the winter, when all there is to do is stand and stare, she’d gesture with a many-ringed hand and then i’d see what i hadn’t seen, what she was blessed and cursed to see always, what made her an artist, for better, for worse,a beautiful strain of music could knock her down,and there were the stray cats and the flowers all crowding round her door, the runes and the stars all speaking to her, i lived in a house made sentient by her paintings, i ate up her words, i watched her stories weave around each one of us, and she grew old but she was never old, and then she died, and it’s not the strangest thing she did but it’s so strange,and i remember another sad day some years ago, when she came across me wallowing on the front step, and she said, in her voice so vivid and rare, as she spoke always with the voice of one on stage: “when all the fishes are pulling in opposite directions, the only place to go is into your art, if you’re lucky.”margot tuck coleman was uncannily lucky and found treasure in the sand. she was grand and proud, magnetic, singular, and incorrigible.she has gone into her art.]()
she attracted strays, shunned niceties, defied boredom, painted until her hands wouldn’t paint then did crazy things with watercolor markers, did crazy things overall, the whole time, rode a horse into the ocean to see how it would feel, blasted jazz in the deep dark night, burned down the world,
got sober at seventy-eight years of age, knew everything about major league baseball, would not step one foot out-of-doors without her eyebrows done, would rather crawl than use some crutch, had inexhaustible senses of fashion and humor, didn’t mind letting you know she was a genius,
really did see beauty everywhere, really saw it, sometimes we would stand together and look at a dusty shelf or the purple mesh bag that held the clementines, in the winter, when all there is to do is stand and stare, she’d gesture with a many-ringed hand and then i’d see what i hadn’t seen, what she was blessed and cursed to see always, what made her an artist, for better, for worse,
a beautiful strain of music could knock her down,
and there were the stray cats and the flowers all crowding round her door, the runes and the stars all speaking to her, i lived in a house made sentient by her paintings, i ate up her words, i watched her stories weave around each one of us, and she grew old but she was never old, and then she died, and it’s not the strangest thing she did but it’s so strange,
and i remember another sad day some years ago, when she came across me wallowing on the front step, and she said, in her voice so vivid and rare, as she spoke always with the voice of one on stage: “when all the fishes are pulling in opposite directions, the only place to go is into your art, if you’re lucky.”
margot tuck coleman was uncannily lucky and found treasure in the sand. she was grand and proud, magnetic, singular, and incorrigible.
she has gone into her art.
5 months ago
