PAINT as our partner in all the affairs of life may be a new thought, but it is an old established fact nevertheless. In reality paint is so interwoven with every turn of the wheel, that it is forever at our side, like our Siamese Twin.
Suppose we were to wake up some morning to find that paint in every form had been eliminated from the world, from our lives! What consternation, surprise, indignation, and havoc would reign everywhere! Whether for better or worse, for good or evil, it is part of the very warp and woof of our every-day existence, and what a pal and benefactor it really is. Think of our morning train, our motors, our boats, our houses, as paintless! What a queer jumble life would be. But here stands our partner—paint—ready to jump into any breach, and make life full of comfort and happiness and cheer, from the building of a new house, where the painting of every wall, every bit of trim, has to be carefully planned and decided upon, to the many small things about the house that can be transformed by the “Magic Touch” of paint.
The dear old home that has stood in rain, and wind, and snow, for years, and begins to show its many battles, seems to implore us to brighten up its faithful face. And so we do. We paint it a soft old ivory white with fresh green shutters, and it seems to expand with joy and happiness, and smiles back at us a radiant smile of thanks; and as we regard it with warm affection, we suddenly realize anew how much we love it and owe to it, and a feeling of most tender warmth fills us, and fills our day, and Life takes on a fresh beginning. We return at night with a new glow of well-being in our hearts. It passes on to our friends, to whom our radiant newly dressed house also gives joy. It permeates the very air, and indirectly works its way into unknown channels for good; for nothing we ever do can remain unto us alone. Every act, however small, has its immediate reaction, like the circles made by a pebble, spreading ever wider, far beyond our vision. The whole community is cheered because of our freshly painted house.
Take the practical side. Suppose you have a house you want to sell. It is shabby, down at the heel, forlorn and sad. If you will put it in condition and paint it inside and out (give it the “Magic Touch”), your chances for selling it are ten to one in your favor. You present your house at its best, at its highest possibilities. Everything depends upon the way a thing is presented. A purchaser immediately sees what it really looks like. One out of a hundred prospective purchasers has the imagination to see it in his mind’s eye and realize its possibilities, if he first beholds it in its downtrodden state. Besides, he isn’t buying possibilities, he wants to see what he is buying. He sees it, he likes it, he buys it. The “Magic Touch” has brought it fresh, beautiful, and living to his recognition. In his mind’s eye he sees his family installed, happy and cozy, within its cheerful walls. The deed is done. The house is sold. Then the joy that paint brings into our lives, the radiance, the color. We all love color, color that Nature first taught us to love. How can we bring it into our midst, with its gay vibrant song? By paint, and only by paint. And so again our debt to paint grows greater with our realization of all that it can mean.
Paint is so clean. Almost any condition of grubbiness can be made sanitary and wholesome by paint, and it keeps out and prevents illness and disorders.
The use of paint is as old as history. We find it on the mummy cases of Egypt, on the shores of the leaden, swinging Nile, though the medium used then was wax mixed with the pigment. The medium has changed, but it has gone down the ages, steadily at our sides, varying, growing, developing, never standing still, active, ready for any call of life. It went into the Service, holding off the iron rain of shell on the painted dust-colored helmets of our boys, thus eliminating the target they would otherwise have made; camouflaging our ships, our trains, our tanks, and our trucks. It helped in all the campaigns. What would we have done without the posters, the banners, the inspiration offered by paint on every hand? We couldn’t have done anything without it, without its magic. It is part of life and a very serious part of it. It transforms; it brings joy and gladness in its train. It is sanitary, it is practical, it is most constructive; only good follows in its wake.
Paint is historical, and teaches us much. Take the characteristic painting of the Norse countries. The furniture used in the peasants’ houses is painted in flat, hard, brilliant colors, expressive of the climate. It is a record of what people see and feel, and so translate into their lives and surroundings. The subtle, inscrutable, complicated civilization of the East is expressed in the Oriental painting of every description, meticulous as it is, detailed, and filled with most exquisite color of every possible nuance, the most delicate shades and tones.
Paint is pigment, or color, and a medium, whether it be oil or wax, or something else by which it is applied, but it has its own far reaching psychology. It is inspirational, and really spiritual in its reaction on mankind. We may paint a house for the most practical of reasons, to preserve it from the weather, but we are carried, in spite of ourselves, beyond the point of hard fact, to a certain positive feeling of pleasure and satisfaction and joy it gives us.
Back of all seeming hard, cold facts lies the truth of Life: it is Inspiration. For that reason our debt to Paint mounts higher and higher, as we think about it and realize that it is in very close association with everything about us, a very vital part of our human existence, and that we could not, at the present stage of our development, possibly be comfortable, or clean, or happy without the “Magic Touch,” the Miracle of the wonderful “Partnership of Paint.”