Colors, Textures and My Father’s Paintings
My father and I never played catch when I was young. In fact, my strongest memories relating to my father from my childhood are of him hosting home tours of his studio. I remember walking through the room, looking up at framed watercolor paintings of frogs and of old men who I can only describe as “stereotypically Irish”, wearing flat caps and drinking Guinness in dilapidated bars. I never made the connection that my father was considered talented, because in my world, making art was simply a part of life.
My earliest memories consist of colors and textures rather than words or faces. I lived in blissful ignorance of the problem that was plaguing me. I have sensory processing disorder, which is a disorder that affects every aspect of my life. My mind does not interpret signals received from sensory stimuli correctly, which fundamentally disrupts my motor functions, emotional responses, and general ability to perform basic tasks. Today, while I may move mostly normally, having normal gestures, posture and a good stride are all self-trained abilities. Specifically, I am a sensory seeker, which put my mind into a sort of perpetual overdrive as a child. I spent my days burying myself in blankets, rubbing my hands through the carpet, and to this day cannot stop feeling my beard. The result of this was that I barely noticed the presence of other people during my youth, and this included my dad.
The Upbringing of An Artist
My father, Josh Taylor, is a very unique man. The child of a multifaceted but rebellious young woman and an aspiring artist, his genes destined him to be talented. I have no idea what type of man he would have become had his father stuck around, but he did not. By the time my father was born, Charlie Parriot was long gone doing God knows what. He would later go on to have many other children with many other women and create art with the likes of Chihuly. Although he is successful, he still calls my father and laments on the struggles of life, because, despite his success, there is still something missing for him. I don’t see him as even close to half the man my father is. He chased his dreams and found great success, but this was at the expense of his relationships. And, despite my distaste for my grandfather’s actions, my dad still finds the time to check up on Charlie. I don’t know if I will ever understand why my dad gives him the time of day, but the intricacies of their relationship are not for me to judge.
My father was raised by his single mother, her mother, and her mother’s sisters. He never had a strong father figure. His interpretation of what it meant to be a father was based on his own opinions, rather than borrowed from someone else. The only sport he only grew up watching was UNC basketball, and he spent his childhood honing his artistic skills rather than working on his layup. Because of this, his manhood developed into something fundamentally different than that of many growing up in the 70s and 80s. While he watched UNC basketball and shot hoops with his friends, these “manly” activities were never his priority. He looked up to Don Bluth more than he did Michael Jordan.
An Aversion To Playing Ball
As a child, I never understood why people loved sports. I got bored listening to the stats of players, and never enjoyed throwing around a ball. One of the main reasons for this was my lack of physical coordination. In PE, I was frustrated by my inability to play like the rest of the kids, and would rather have been laying in bed at home daydreaming. In rec soccer, I sat on the ground and threw dirt in the air pretending that I was looking at explosions, as I had no interest in scoring goals. Luckily, no matter what I was interested, or how I expressed myself, my father was there to support me. I only wish that I had been more aware of this when I was a child.
As I got older, I got bigger. When I say I got bigger, I mean that I became extraordinarily large. By my first year at Northwood, I was 6’3 and at least 200 pounds. During my tour of the school, a coach whose face I cannot remember handed me a stack of forms to try out for football. I remember feeling unseen, recalling my disillusionment with sports as a child. I still lacked any interest in things like football, but as a large young man, everyone expected me to participate in athletics.
At this point in my life, I began to contemplate why I had never been interested in the things that other young boys were interested in. Then it came to me: it was a combination of my lack of physical ability and the fact that my father had never brought me up believing these things were important. I was only in rec soccer because all of the other young boys were in rec soccer. I was not a part of the team because my parents truly thought that playing sports was an essential part of being a male. My father had grown up playing cards with old women and doodling in sketchbooks, and it had made him the man he was today. I suddenly realized the gift of my father’s influence in my life–he had shown by example that I did not need to participate in activities that did not interest me to become a man as great as my dad. He may joke that I should play basketball to get into college, but I know that he understands that my passions lie elsewhere. He had shown me the best version of manhood that a boy can emulate.
The Chains that Weigh Us Down
At the beginning of my high school career, there was a shift in my father’s behavior. He stopped taking many freelance art assignments and took on a job with a regular salary to help support the family. While the job still involved the arts, his general distaste with the nature of the work lay in his inability to express himself as fully as he would have liked. While he never expressed this lack of artistic flexibility to me explicitly, the sudden sadness I saw in him was something I had to have an answer for, so I came to this conclusion for myself. I had finally begun to appreciate the well-rounded person that he had made me, and now his passion seemed to be fading.
One evening, my dad opened up to me in a way that I imagine fathers never do with their sons. We were sitting in the screened-in porch of a lake house our family had rented for Memorial Day weekend. It was late, and everyone else had gone to bed. We were sitting outside, listening to crickets chirp and having a simple conversation about how the weekend had been going. Through a series of events I cannot fully recall, the discussion took a turn. He told me that he was worried that because he had grown up without a father, he wasn’t able to provide the image of manhood I needed, as this was something that had never been provided to him. He began to cry, and I hugged him as hard as I could. I had never really seen this side of my dad before. I had always seen him as a great man and role model, and it broke my heart to know that he didn’t see himself in the same way. I tried to reassure him, but I didn’t quite know how.
The Apple and The Tree
Recently my passion for the arts has only been blossoming. Throughout the visual arts courses at Northwood, I was able to find my voice when expressing myself through pen and ink. My recent series of art, which focuses on the struggles between man and nature, is the proudest I’ve ever been of my art. On top of this, I was recently included in the North Carolina Association for Scholastic Activities art competition, where the visual arts classes responded via art to the prompt “seflie unfiltered”. It was an accomplishment I feel honored to have had the opportunity to be a part of. Throughout all of this, my main inspiration was my father. I wanted and still want to become as skilled as he is now.
A few weeks ago, I came home to a sight that I had missed for a long time. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, pen in hand, hunched over an original piece of art. It was honestly a welcome surprise, as I had been secretly wishing to see my dad doing art again. The piece, a sketch of a small gnome carrying a cart, filled me with nostalgia. I was transported back to the world I inhabited in my earliest memories, transported back to a time of looking up at the pictures hanging on the wall, only now I was looking down at my father and admiring his talent with a whole new perspective on art that I lacked in my youth. He later told me that my accomplishments as a young artist had inspired him to express his creativity again. All my life I had been inspired by him, and all of a sudden the roles had reversed. I didn’t know how to respond, as it was a position that I never thought I would have found myself in.
My sensory problems as a child and my dad’s lack of a father figure throughout his youth fundamentally shaped our relationship in a way that feels very unique. We both understand that the other is not perfect, but we do our best to replicate the best qualities of the other. We do not always see eye-to-eye, but that never breaks our bond. I just wish that I had been perceptive enough to understand the kind of man my father was sooner.
-By Henry Taylor
