Fathers

Sometimes phrases misread present new ideas that are worthy of reflection.

Here is an example: my father has gotten into the habit of texting us children links to the daily reading from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest. The title for today’s read, “The Drawing of the Father” (meaning the summoning off God to His children) and I hardly took it to mean a picture of a parent.  To which my first thought was that every man should make a drawing of his father at some point in his life – with pencil or ink or even paint if the man be an artist, and if he is not, a portrait formed of words. Some men wait until that picture must be an obituary, but I recommend precedents.

Portaits are funny things – never quite the truth, yet able perhaps to get to a kind of essence of the person pictured. Are the lines smooth or ragged? What is the person doing in the moment captured? What does this tell us about the subject, and how we are related to him or her?

For awhile now I have wished to make such a portrait myself. I even took the photo below some months ago, to use as a source for an attempt in oil – although there is another picture from some years ago, of my dad with a look of happy exaggerated surprise on his face, that would serve even better.

Perhaps I will use my misread thought as a spur to tackle that project.

Question for you: how would you draw your father? What would the picture look like?