Painter of the Month

Painter of the Month: Jessica Rainey

Transcript of conversation with Jessica Rainey; Cardinal Hayes School for Special Children, Millbrook, New York.  New A.R.T. artist Jessica Rainey is describing the Tracker trainee she worked with.

I was like, “What, are you scared?  Go, just go”.  It’s not whether I want to go with it; it’s just that my brain wants to go with it.  I go wherever my brain wants to, whatever my brain wants to do, I do. This is just one step for me and then there’s another step.  But before you take that one, you need to take the first one.  You don’t really worry about if it’s good enough or if people get offended, as long as you get it.  I say just go with it because you never know when the opportunity like this is gonna come along. 

You don’t gotta get it, you just gotta know what you think about it, not what all the other people think about it.  This whole universe ain’t in synch, man.  This whole universe is like, upside down and right side up.  Some people might like it; some people might hate you for it. 

We got a great group of people here, great helpers. That’s all you need, great people who will listen to you and who will paint what you want to paint, not what other people want you to actually put on the canvas.  Why stop when you can just go ahead and do what you like to do?  See, when you got people that always tell you what to do, you’re like, “No, I don’t want to do this no more.  See you later.”   It’s not fun.  It just winds up being a lot of work.   But when you got people that don’t push you around, you’re like, “Okay, I can work with this, I can work with that.”  I just go with the flow.

So if you like something, just go ahead and do it. If you want to do stuff like this, it’s your prerogative.  But I say this stuff is beautiful man, this stuff is awesome.  This stuff can make a person want to do stuff, even if they’re evil or if they’re nice or if even if they don’t got a soul.  

I can do a lot of things.  I can even take you to places that you never visited before.  Just like stories.  They can take you to places that you’ve never been or that you never think you’re gonna be, or think that you don’t want to be.  You just put your heart into what you’re doing and heck, maybe someday after you get this thing accomplished, you can actually do what you want to do.  And maybe someday we all can. 

Some people don’t want the hand that they’re dealt.  I didn’t want the hand that I was dealt, sitting in this chair the rest of my life, but it’s the hand that I was dealt and I intend to play it. I guess what I’m trying to say is even if you’re in the wheelchair or you could walk, it doesn’t matter.  It’s your brain that really matters, not your body, not the things that you can’t do.  And it really is your brain that matters.It’s the person that inhabits the body that really matters.

You can just take it, or you can just take it and run with it.