untitled / shruti kunadia

excerpt from

Through it All

Sienna Dunham

Quite simply, Olive embodies light. She’s the type of girl that makes your heart warm the second she walks into the room. This light, this love, blesses every single piece of her artwork. I couldn’t help but hang them in my office, they served as a constant reminder that life was magnificent. Even if I didn’t get enough sleep, or even if I had the worse day at work, Olive just had that special ability of making me feel alive. Even if I fought with my wife that day, or even if I struggled to get out of bed, Olive could always make me feel better. Even after death, I feel a rush of life, just because of what my darling little girl means to me. 

People are born and die every day. Time on earth is limited the second you are born. But, art lives forever. Art allows people to live forever. 

On Saturday, Olive lays on my office floor, just like we used to do together. She blasts Taylor Swift’s new album, Speak Now, and her beautiful mother sits in my office chair watching our daughter paint. Her brush strokes are rapid, so sure of themselves. So ready to show what they can make come alive. 

She’s wearing her favorite paint clothes: a bright yellow, extra large t-shirt and paint-stained leggings with neon pandas all over them. She’s never been good about keeping herself clean while painting. 

“But dad, I’m just making myself part of the painting. Why should the artwork be constricted by the borders of these little canvases?” she would say to me. 

“You’re just a slob, honey. It has nothing to do with you wanting to break out of whatever confinements your paintings are being subjected to, or whatever you want to say,” I would always tease back. She had recently discovered Banksy and his unconditional way of painting wherever and however he wanted and constantly gushed about him. Something about the idea of complete liberty made her ecstatic, encouraging her to expand her ideas on what art really is. 

Paint covers Olive’s nose, a sight that her mother laughs at. Olive smiles back but doesn’t stop painting, not even for a millisecond. Slowly but surely a face appears on her canvas. 

A face that belongs to me. 

She hangs the painting on the wall, in the one spot that she’s left bare all these years. A spot she’s been waiting for something special, something magnificent to place there. 

Her mother, my strong wife, smiles with tears of joy running down her face. “It’s perfect, he’ll love it.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so. You were right to wait and hang something there. Nothing better could have taken that spot.” 

And with that, Olive has brought me back to live on the wall in this room: forever watching her create life with her brush.