The Portrait We Paint

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Oscar Wilde

If you think about it, we are the artists of our own lives, and what we create is uniquely ours. The portrait we paint of ourselves is a composite of nearly every aspect of our lives. We decide, at least to some extent, what others see. And as though our lives were works of art hanging on a museum wall, people look, interpret, and decide for themselves what they think of what we present.

The Denver Art museum once had an exhibition featuring 120 works by Claude Monet, spanning most of his life. Beginning with his earliest paintings and continuing through his final years, you could see the changes. His subjects changed, certainly, but so did the way he saw them. Age, experience, loss, love, place, and time found their way onto the canvas. The artist was still Monet, but the paintings revealed a man who had continued to evolve.

Perhaps we aren’t so different.

Through our choices, we continually disclose something about the person we have become. The rooms we live in, the books on our shelves, the way we dress, the people we welcome into our lives, the causes we care about, all become brush strokes in a larger portrait.

In a perfect world, what we present to others would be a true picture of who we are. But I don’t think it’s that easy.

Instead of realism, we sometimes paint something more abstract and harder to discern. We emphasize certain colors and paint over others. We show confidence when we feel uncertain. We say we’re fine when we’re not. We carefully arrange the outward pieces of our lives while keeping the more complicated ones tucked away.

Some of this is intentional. Some of it is simply human.

There are parts of ourselves we readily put on display and others we keep in a private collection. We may want to be seen as capable, generous, independent, sophisticated, happy, or strong. None of those things need to be false, but neither are they the entire painting.

And then there is the question of the viewer. Just as two people can stand before the same painting and see entirely different things, two people can look at us and come away with very different impressions. We may have some control over what we present, but surprisingly little control over how it is interpreted.

Perhaps that is why becoming comfortable with ourselves matters so much as we grow older. At some point, we can stop worrying quite so much about whether everyone understands the painting.

The canvas is ours.

There will be places where we painted over mistakes, colors we once loved and later abandoned, unfinished corners, and perhaps a few choices we wouldn’t make again. But there will also be layers that could only have been created by time and experience.

Monet’s later paintings did not look like his earlier ones. They weren’t supposed to. Neither should we.

We are works in progress for as long as we are here—adding, subtracting, reconsidering, and occasionally starting over. And perhaps aging with grace has less to do with creating a perfect portrait than with allowing the one we have created to become increasingly honest.

Not necessarily prettier. Not more impressive.

Simply more recognizably our own.

Peace be with you.

If you’re new here, welcome. I write about aging with grace, finding beauty in everyday life, and the quiet moments that remind us what matters most. I’m so glad you’ve stopped by.