This Renoir at The Nelson-Atkins a reminder that life imitates even unfinished art

Every time I visit The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, I pause at a particular Renoir. It’s a small portrait of a serene woman leaning on her elbows. Hints of grass and foliage closely outline her image. With the exceptions of a nearby disembodied face and rogue splotches, this woman is floating on otherwise untouched canvas. It’s as if she and her fescue halo were plunked down in a linen factory.

I can groove on this piece of art for many reasons. The main one is I have trouble completing projects, both artistic and mundane. It’s a direct reminder, as I have been haunted by my own abandoned painting for a couple of years now. My intention was to capture my husband and grand dog happily pausing in an outdoorsy scene. But life got in the way.

It’s torture to keep this neglected canvas in sight, just beyond my computer screen. “Finish me,” it taunts on the days I fail to ignore it.

So heck yeah, Pierre-August Renoir, my hope is you might have bounced around like a pinball, too. Your petite painting, the one that keeps tripping me up, could be regarded as abandoned work. I imagine your 19th century friends saying, “Come on, Renny, cut the caffeine. Focus. That canvas is the size of a loaf pan. Zut alors, fill in the rest.

Art aficionados would say, “But that’s not a painting, it’s a study! It was merely preparation for a bigger project.” All true, according to the information placard next to the work. The one I finally read.

However, if you stroll by that particular Renoir while on your way to catch a certain Monet, you would think, maybe in a Joe Pesci voice, “Fella, what the…? Why didn’t ya finish the paintin’?”

Abandonment would be a natural assumption for those of us who just can’t or won’t stop to read every single art blurb. Anyway, how could we be looking at a mere “study,” whatever that means? This canvas is framed in an ornate gold leaf number. That alone communicates a fancy seal of approval. It screams, “Official painting here, folks!” Even if he didn’t frame the canvas himself, the artist took the time to sign the lower left corner.

Plus, Renoir’s half blank work hangs in the most buttoned-up atmosphere, not amid any whimsical sketch-on-the-back-of-an-envelope collection. This piece is hobnobbing just paces away from Van Gogh’s “Olive Trees” and a breathtaking Caravaggio just down the hall.

Yet I think the resting elbow lady belongs right where she is. Somehow the work doesn’t give me the sense of throwing a pair of flip-flops into in a room full of laced up Degas ballet shoes. In my book, with all the context I’ve described, it’s an official painting. And it’s unfinished. And I love it.

It’s time we give a nod to the blank patches of “canvas” out in the world. Our own attempts and experiments could be considered the seeds of future masterpieces. Just ask the experts at our world-class art museum, the ones who nailed the “study” to the wall.

That particular Renoir makes me feel (a little) better about my many unfinished projects. Like my scattered, disorganized collection of unedited essays. Maybe they’re sketches for a bigger work.

Mundane-wise, I even feel less guilty about my laundry room, where behind the washer and dryer, there’s still ugly green paint I couldn’t reach to brush over. (No way I was going to have perfectly balanced machines moved.)

My photo albums are partially completed, or empty. I high-five myself that I’ve never attempted scrapbooking.

This winter I have tried only one of four new recipes I took the time and ink to print out.

None of my gasping indoor plants has been repotted. Yet.

So much hope in “yet.” I guess life is an awkward dance of fits and starts, but perhaps useful discovery. As the saying goes, art imitates life. Including the unfinished parts.

Reach Denise Snodell at stripmalltree@gmail.com.