With more than a hint of nerves, I slide into an empty seat in the auditorium for my first university lecture. I look down the aisle, hoping to see a friendly face, but there is no one I recognise, which isn’t too surprising as I only arrived in the city on Saturday. At the front, on a slightly raised wooden platform stands the very smartly dressed lecturer. Her quiet cough into the microphone indicates that she is ready to start. I open my iPad, type in my password and watch the screen light up: now I’m also ready.
“A very warm welcome to you all. I would like to congratulate everyone here for choosing this beautiful city to follow the Bachelor of Arts Degree course. I’m Professor Mary Brand, and I’ll be with you through the three exciting years ahead of you. So, to start us off on that wonderful road of learning, I am going to ask you two simple questions. I would like you to jot down your answers and then reflect on what you have written.”
The professor steps back and, along with all the other ‘fresher’ students, I nervously wait for the questions, wondering if I’ll be able to answer them correctly.
“Question one,” she announces.
“Why are you dedicating three years of your young lives to studying art? Don’t think too long about the answer, just focus on the first thing that comes to mind. And question two is: what do you want to achieve?”
I relax back in my seat, relieved that I am going to be fine with these first two questions of my university life. I know my response before the next instructions are shared.
“Make your answers short. Only one or two words. But make your reflections on those answers much, much longer. You might still be reflecting on them when you leave this grand institution. Okay everybody, over to you.”
After opening up a new screen, I type in First Lesson and underneath write the words ‘Answer One – Grandma. Answer Two – To inspire others to paint’.
I close my iPad: I don’t need the words in front of me to be able to reflect on them.
As a child, I spent a great deal of time at my grandma’s. She didn’t live too far away. In fact, close enough for me to cycle there when I was a teenager. I always loved going, partly because I had my own bedroom and, if I’m really honest, she spoilt me. Grandma’s house was warm and cosy, every shelf loaded with interesting artefacts she had collected over the years. She had an endless supply of biscuits and real Coke, which I could take without asking! Her garden seemed to be continuously blessed with sunshine and had a mature apple tree for shade next to a shed always referred to as ‘Grandma’s old office’. It’s funny how so many of my grandma’s belongings have her name attached to them: Grandma’s kitchen, Grandma’s garden, Grandma’s bedroom, Grandma’s books, Grandma’s chair and, of course, Grandma’s paintings.
Grandma’s paintings were hanging all over the house. Every wall had at least two framed pictures on display. My favourite one hung above the table in my bedroom. It was a painting of an artist at work. You can only see the back of the artist but you can clearly see the painting she is working on. It is very small of course, and placed on a black easel. Beyond that painted easel are two large, open French doors looking out into a garden. The apple tree is bare and seemingly battered by a heavy winter storm. A young girl, standing in the rain, is struggling to hold onto a red umbrella. The painting on the tiny easel shows the exact same scene in miniature. You can see that the artist is about to complete the painting as her brush is touching the girl’s long blonde hair. I just loved the idea of a painting of a painting. And I fantasised it was my hair that was being painted.
When I was about eight years old, I climbed onto the table in my room and lifted the painting off the wall. I wanted to have a closer look at it. I needed to see if it could possibly be me. Yet, the closer I looked the more confused I became: the dress definitely wasn’t one I would wear, far too flowery. And that outstretched arm? Does my arm look like that? So skinny?
I hadn’t heard my grandma come into the room.
“Inspecting the painting, Debbie?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“I’m looking to see if that girl there,” I pointed at the tiny figure, “could be me.”
“She does look a little like you, doesn’t she? It isn’t you, Debs. But it is someone you know.”
“Is it Emma?” Grandma shook her head and gave out a little laugh. “And I know it can’t be Sarah, she’s got brown hair.”
“No Debs, it’s someone much closer to you.”
“What? Closer than my bestest friends, Emma and Sarah?”
“Yes, someone even closer than your best friends.” Grandma paused for a few seconds and then said, “It’s actually your mum when she was about your age.”
I didn’t respond but moved my face even nearer the painting to have another good look.
“Wow, Mum is famous. She’s in a painting,” I gasped. Grandma surely picked up my sense of pride, knowing my mum had been painted.
“Who is this then?” I asked, pointing to the back of the artist.
“Who do you think it is?”
“Is it Picasso?” He was the only artist I’d ever heard of.
Grandma laughed again, a little louder this time.
“No. Unfortunately, it’s not Picasso. Have another guess.”
When I raised my eyebrows, Grandma knew I wasn’t going to suggest any more names.
“It’s me,” she announced.
“You? Wow, you’re famous. Both you and Mum in the same painting. I’d love to be in a painting.”
“Maybe you will, one day.”
There was still something bothering me about the painting but I couldn’t quite figure out what.
It wasn’t until much later, that I realised what I still didn’t know: who had actually painted it. I knew it wasn’t Picasso in the painting, but he could still have painted it.
“Gran, did Picasso paint you and Mum?” I asked.
“Oh my goodness, no. It would be incredibly valuable if he had.”
“So, who painted it then?”
“Come with me,” she said.
We walked into the dining room and stopped in front of a painting of Souter Lighthouse.
“Now, you know where that is, but you don’t know who painted it. And that one behind you?” I spun around and looked at the bright yellow picture of the sun shining above an ancient castle. “That’s by the same person. In fact, all the paintings in here are made by one person.”
I still couldn’t guess and shook my head.
“Me,” she said with one of her brightest smiles.
“What, you’re an artist? Wow, my grandma’s an artist. Will you paint me? Please, please.”
“Oh, Debs, that would have been lovely, but I stopped painting years ago. You know the old shed at the bottom of the garden? That’s where I used to spend all my time. It was my art studio. I loved it.”
“We could go there now,” I suggested enthusiastically.
Again, she laughed but not as cheerfully. “There are only spiders and dusty, blank canvasses in there these days.”
The idea of spiders dampened my spirit a little.
“Debs, I am going to let you into a secret about that painting of your mum in the garden. There’s a hidden message in it. If you study it carefully, very carefully, I am sure you will find it. There’s your challenge.”
I headed straight back to my room to have another close look at it. I was determined to discover what my grandma meant.
For tea, Grandma had made my favourite: beans on toast with poached eggs. She was unusually quiet.
“Gran, why did you stop painting? It’s not like playing netball, where you get too old to jump up and down and run around. You only need to hold a brush and mix a few paints.”
She didn’t answer straight away. By the time she responded, I had eaten all the beans.
“There were several reasons, Debs. I was just too busy looking after your mum and your Uncle John, art equipment was getting more and more expensive, and nobody wanted to buy my paintings. I started working at the Co-op and never went back to it. I suppose I just lost interest.”
“Well, Gran, I love them. I’d buy every one of them.”
After tea, I went up to my room, climbed back onto the table and rehung the painting of Gran, the artist, and Mum holding the umbrella. It was really tricky to get the cord on the back, to catch the wall hook. It took me a few attempts before it eventually caught. As I was straightening the frame, I suddenly saw it: Grandma’s secret message. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand what the message could mean.
I jumped down from the table and in my excitement crashed into the chair.
Downstairs, in Grandma’s kitchen, Gran was making a cup of tea as Mum had just arrived to pick me up.
“Mum, did you know Gran was an artist?”
“Of course, I knew, my love.”
“I didn’t know. You never told me.”
“Debbie, we always said ‘That’s one of Grandma’s paintings’,” Mum replied.
“Yes, but you always said that about everything. Grandma’s garden, Grandma’s shed. I just thought the paintings were Grandma’s. I didn’t know she actually painted them.”
Mum gave me a hug and said, “Now you know.”
“Grandma,” I said in a slow, serious voice, “I think I found your secret message, but I don’t understand it.”
“What do you mean?” Mum asked.
“Gran has painted herself, painting you. You know which one I’m talking about. On the tiny canvas is the painting of what the artist is looking at through the windows. And something is different,” I said.
Gran looked at me and smiled.
“The lady artist, you Gran, is painting exactly what she sees. The girl, you Mum, is holding a brolly, near the apple tree. It’s raining. But on the tiny canvas, the girl is holding two things, a brolly in one hand and a very small, green apple in the other. The girl in the garden doesn’t have an apple, her hand is empty.”
“Very well spotted, Detective Debs,” said Grandma.
I didn’t think my mum knew about the apple.
“Why did you add an apple that didn’t exist?” Mum asked Grandma.
“Well, I wanted to show that even when things aren’t going your way, like bad weather, wind and an uncontrollable umbrella, there are still good things to look forward to. Placing a ripe apple in your hand showed that things would soon be fine. The winter weather will go away, and summer will win through.”
“So, when you stopped painting because you went to work, Grandma, was that your winter?” I asked. She knew what was coming next.
“Will you paint me in summer then? Please, please.”
She did.
When Grandma rekindled her passion for art, I was the first person to sit for her. That painting is now waiting to hang in my new lodgings. It will sit alongside a second painting: my watercolour of Grandma standing outside her reorganised spider-free studio.
I look up at the lecturer, then back at my iPad, select the word Grandma, and make the font much larger. I delete my answer to the lecturer’s second question on what we want to achieve while we’re at university and then I write ‘To inspire others to love art, just like my Grandma inspired me’.
Finally, I double-underline it.
(Published, People’s Friend, May 2025).
