Art is the Gift--a She Reads Guest Post by Ariel Allison

I’m not much of a painter. In my thirty-four years I’ve only created one decent watercolor. And that was by accident in the third grade. But, as the daughter of a prolific artist, I have a deep respect for those who can create beauty with a brush, a bit of paint, and a canvas. I admire the way they dream things into being.

Sometimes I wonder if we place more importance on the being than the dreaming, as though imagining something means it isn't real. As though it doesn’t exist if others can’t see it and touch it. J.R.R. Tolkien helped me see that what we imagine is every bit as important as what we create. In his short story

“Leaf: by Niggle,” (by far my favorite piece of his writing) he introduces us to a would-be painter named Niggle who wants to create something beautiful and lasting:

“[Niggle] was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.”

I relate to Niggle in many ways. He is tired and distracted and faces constant interruptions. He dreams better than he creates. It takes him years to begin painting his tree. Niggle imagines it in a meadow surrounded by mountains and valleys and streams that stretch on right to the edges of his canvas. But he never gets around to painting them. As a matter of fact only a handful of leaves are completed to his satisfaction. Niggle dies while still obsessing over his leaves.

But.

(This is where I lay my face on the table and weep.)

But. When Niggle is taken to Paradise, he stands in a lush green meadow, so like the one he wanted to paint:

“Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch.

He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. “It’s a gift!” he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.

He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever labored at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.”

This morning I emailed a completed and edited manuscript to my agent. I have held nothing back in the telling of this story. From conception to completion it has taken seven years and countless drafts and more effort that I ever dreamed I would put into a novel.

Maybe I painted a leaf. Maybe I came closer to the whole tree. But what I know for sure is that the act of creating this novel was the gift. And I’m so very thankful for it.

Your homework this weekend: read “Leaf By Niggle”

Read it. See if your dreaming doesn’t become doing after all.