Could I be more than a caregiver, housekeeper, cook, gardener — important jobs, functional jobs, exhausting in their relentlessness? Jackson Pollock characterized art as an act of “self-discovery,” positioning the experience of the individual, not the work, at the center of the endeavor. I didn’t need to be the center of anything. I needed something else. Tole painting became that something.

Written by Anne Ayers Koch. Find more of Anne's writing on Substack.

Edited and produced by Geoff Koch and Amanda Barranco

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Ten years later, Oregon became part of our past. I kept a dozen or so wooden tole projects. Beyond the designs — cherries, gooseberries, pears, grapes, ornate Scandinavian florals — was a less obvious lesson I learned from preparing the wood. The more time I spent on the unglamorous, dirty work — stripping, sanding, staining, sealing — the better the finished piece. Shortcuts never worked. The paint flaked, the wood grain interfered, the brushes lost their shape whenever I rushed. Today, a lifetime later, when the speed and demands of contemporary living make it easier, faster and cheaper to buy things rather than make them I often wonder: What are the hidden costs of our shortcuts?

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