To start the new year right, I would like to share the drawings of Tremaine, who just turned 17 years old before Christmas. (The one above is called The Liberation of Dreaming.) His friend’s mother is friends with Will – there are lots of connections in the neighborhood, between aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. She had stopped in to see the portrait of Will called Plenty. (Apparently she had been the one to do his dreads.) She also told me about her son’s friend Tremaine who she said was particularly talented at both drawing and dance. She thought he would really want to do artwork at Window Studio. He came in later that same day on his way home from school. Soft-spoken yet intense, Tremaine took out his school binder which was bulging with loose-leaf sheets of drawings. He said he didn’t have much use for school, that they didn’t learn anything, but he did seem to have a teacher that had encouraged his drawing.
“There are a lot of messages in my drawings,” he said.
Woandering
He explained the one he’d called “Woandering”, which is a combination of “wondering” and “wandering”.
“This is me on the road of my life since I was born in 1996. My eyes are blindfolded because I don’t know where I am going, and the hole is where my heart is dark and empty. The suitcase is the baggage that I carry around to all the different homes I’ve been in. The little faces are the people laughing at me, knives stab me in the back, and hands reach out to grab me. In my head is weed and money, but also friends and family and that I’m sorry. The tattoo on my arm says I’m only human.”
In 2014, Tremaine intends to learn how to paint a picture like Plenty. That is our shared New Year’s resolution.