Art and Imagination

by Courtney Pierce

As far back as I can remember, maybe age four or five, a small oil painting hung in my grandparents’ living room. It portrayed a young boy dancing in the woods. The ornate gilt frame measured twice the size of the canvas. The boy wore rolled-up linen britches and a frilly linen shirt. His waist coat appeared to be soft. Tousled brown locks topped his exuberant feminine face, so life-like that he appeared to move.

I named him The Dancing Boy.

There was nothing for a young girl to do at my grandparents’ house. The tick and bong of a clock in the dining room cut through the quiet to mark the passage of every slow hour. My paternal grandmother was a fairly terse German woman who held on tight to every minute of her escape from WWII. Whenever I visited, I would plan my own escape by spending an inordinate amount of time staring at that painting, chased by my own imagination. I made-up all kinds of stories about that young dancing boy. What did the music sound like to inspire him to dance? Why were his bare toes so dirty when he’s wearing fancy clothes? Did he run away from home? Did he have to dance in secret because his parents were too strict? Who are the two shadowy adults in the background?

As I approached my late-teens, my questions focused om the painting itself. I broke through my fear of my grandmother to dig a bit deeper into its history. She told me it was created in the early 1800s and had been given to her as a gift by her employer after an elaborate remodel of a guest bedroom. In fact, most of the furniture in my grandparents' Georgetown home were cast-offs from that wealthy family. She also told me the painting had been a rescued section of a much larger piece that had been destroyed by fire. 

To me, that little cutaway had become its own work of art.

After my grandparents passed away, The Dancing Boy hung in my parents’ living room for over thirty years. My Dad requested I research how best to have it professionally cleaned and conserved. Decades of cigarette smoke had veiled the luminous skin tones, vivid details of the boy’s frock, and richness of the woodsy vegetation. I took the piece out of its heavy frame for any indication of the artist. Nothing. But I did discover it had been painted on wood, not canvas.

I took The Dancing Boy to the Portland Art Museum for a deeper inspection by the curator. My Mom freaked a bit, however, because she was convinced that The Dancing Boy had been stolen by the Nazis and didn’t want me to get busted. Geez, Mom! And I thought I had a vivid imagination.

The curator’s eyes lit up when I showed him the painting. Under the glow of lighted magnifying glasses, he made all sorts of noises: “hmmm . . . ahhh . . . mmm.” Then he raised his head and nearly blinded me before switching off his headgear. “As far as I can tell, it’s definitely Early American, around the Revolutionary War," he said. "But without an identifying signature, it’s hard to say who might’ve painted it. Whoever it was, they were damn good.”

“Damn good to know,” I said. 

Then my imagination started to race with more stories. Maybe Ben Franklin had been in the company of the original painting, or Washington, Adams, Hamilton, or Jefferson. I suddenly heard tankards clinking and the scratching of quilled words on the Declaration of Independence. That would certainly be cause for a budding young man to dance in the woods. The possibilities were endless. I packed up the painting and hung it back on my parents’ living room wall, my soul having grown ten times in size that day.

On Christmas morning of 2012, my parents came by the house for our traditional exchange of gifts. We had spend limits in place, so gifts were usually gag-like in nature. My Dad had been failing rapidly, and I knew he would only exist in my heart quite soon. I sat him on the couch in the living room and handed him a cup of coffee. He pointed to the front door.

“Go out to the truck and get that big box in the back.”

I did as I was told, of course. I had no idea what my parents had given me, but my pulse raced like a hummingbird's. I brought in the box and set it on the floor in front of my father.

“Go ahead and open it,” he said. “It’s for you, not me.”

And when I did, I broke into tears. He had given me The Dancing Boy. I didn’t know what to say, but my Dad did:

“It’s yours now, kid. I wanted to be able to see the look on your face before I’m dead.”

Dad. A steel-belted marshmallow.

It took only fifty years to come up with the ultimate story about The Dancing Boy. The painting became the subject of magical realism in my second novel of the Stitches Trilogy, Brushes. The three-book series—Stitches, Brushes, and Riffs—centers on a baby boomer couple, Jean and Spence Collins, who find a magical artifact at an estate sale. When they discover it holds the key to immortality, they set off on quite the world adventure, but not without getting into serious trouble with the FBI. It’s a bit like The Thin Man meets History Detectives—with a twist of magic.

I relived every wondrous moment of little-girl imagination when I wrote Brushes. And immortalizing The Dancing Boy forever on its printed pages means that I, too, have added to the painting's long history.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her husband. stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. By day, she is an executive in the entertainment industry and uses her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor and mystery. She has studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.  

Coming Soon!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and

windtreepress.com 

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

The Dushane Sisters Trilogy concludes with Indigo Legacy, due out in the fall, 2018. There's love in the air for Olivia and Woody, but will family intrigue get in the way? Ride along for the wild trip that starts in a New York auction house and peaks in a mansion on Boston's Beacon Hill. The Dushane sisters finally get to the truth about their mother.

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."