What Color Is Creativity? Check Your Cuffs!

What do I wear when I paint? The same thing, every time:

Black sweat pants, wide-legged, with a waistband that sits just above my hips. A long-sleeve top: Either white or brown or khaki green. My black hooded sweatshirt with a ring-pull zipper, always halfway up. A white apron printed with a picture of a Rainbow trout in a frying pan and the words, “The End of the Rainbow.” Bright pink Crocs, purchased before the company actually made sizes for women. They look like pink rubber boats on my feet.

Once upon a time, these were all perfectly decent clothes (well, maybe not the Crocs). Today, everything is splattered with paint. The pants are smeared with zinc white, raw umber, and some sort of teal blue. My shirts have dots of burnt sienna all over them. My sweatshirt boasts a rainbow display, especially on the cuffs: Ultramarine, cobalt, and cerulean blue; bright cadmium orange; primary yellow; chromium oxide green; pyrrole red, and light magenta. The apron? It may say “rainbow,” but the crusty layers of color make it more like a blizzard of different hues.

What’s so special about this outfit? Not a thing, except I’ve discovered that I can’t really relax into painting unless I’m wearing it. I can’t fully enjoy the process if I’m worried about splashing quinacridone red on a regular pair of shoes or dragging a clean sleeve through a dollop of mars black. I need to be able to wipe Paynes gray directly on my pants or apron if necessary. For me, these clothes are as critical to the open, expansive, spontaneous creative process as the paints themselves.

My studio clothes seem to take a whole new significance when I wear them out of the house.  Confession: I am often in a rush, since I tend to paint up until the very last second before I need to pick up my kids from school. As a result, I occasionally wear said outfit (okay, not the apron or the Crocs) out of the house. Each time I do, I swear that this is the last time I leave the studio dressed this way. Most days, I cover up with a jacket, so no one is the wiser. But on warm days when a jacket would seem ridiculous, my colorful cuffs – and the rest of my splatters — are exposed. That’s when I’ve noticed a surprising but consistent reaction. Friends, acquaintances, my kids’ teachers, seem to get really excited when they see me.

“Wow, look at that! You’ve got paint on your clothes!”

It’s as if I’ve done something slightly taboo: An adult has got paint all over her clothes! People seem to get a vicarious thrill out of seeing my messy attire — and I often hear a genuine wistfulness in their voice. Do the paint splatters trigger a childhood memory of coming home dirty, be it from digging into pots of finger paints or making mud pies in the back yard? Maybe they tap into a deeper, possibly universal desire to make and take quiet, creative time rather than rush from one task or errand to the next. Or maybe it’s simply astonishment that I’ve worn these sloppy old clothes out in public.

Public reaction aside, I love my painting clothes, in spite of – and because of – their splatters, splotches, and splashes. When I inspect the multi-hued cuffs of my sweatshirt or try to discern the original Rainbow trout on my apron, I know I’m also trying to peel back layers of paint and time, metaphorically revisiting images that I dreamed of, sketched out, experimented with, and sometime created. These flecks are the shiny gold I used to embellish my nephew’s bright red heart painting last Christmas. Here is the chartreuse I blended to render my first green chicken. Over here? The rich citrine yellow that perfectly connected a series of jewel-toned cupcakes. My painting clothes may not be pretty – and they are anything but pristine – but for me, they are the perfect attire for traveling comfortably through space, time, and paint.

Look at the time. I’m late again.

Good thing it’s raining outside. I’ll throw on my black raincoat and no one will guess there’s a rainbow of color, just a layer of fabric away. Unless, of course, they spot my rain boots: Black and white zebra stripes, emblazoned with purple.