The Artist Paints My Story - Updated Version with Epilogue

 

Semi-finalist in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition.

The Artist Paints My Story

 

I don’t know the artist as she is the friend of a friend, and, for reasons not fully explained, I have been invited to her studio to watch her work. She opens the door with a smile and, stepping back, wordlessly beckons me to sit in the one uncluttered chair. Her demeanor makes it clear that her art is her focus and conversation would be a distraction, so I settle into the silence – eyes and mind open to whatever will happen.

I look around trying to glean some hints as to why I am here. The artist looks like a hippie who never left the commune and, for a wistful moment, I am taken back to my college days and the bohemian lifestyle I gave up for corporations and conventionality. The studio is a comfortable space, tastefully, yet not overly, decorated. Whimsical objects from foreign travels intermingle in disorganized fashion with the trappings of daily living.

No one theme stands out in the art on her studio walls. At each work, I pause my gaze letting it speak to me, letting it tell its story. All around me, colors and lines form moods rather than images. Multiple easels suggest several works are in progress. However, all but one are draped, providing promise, not substance, hinting of more to come.

The one undraped easel holds a small, blank canvas, barely large enough for a vignette. The artist stands before it, her back to me. She holds her palette in her right hand, the array of colors on it carefully chosen and mixed. Her body language says the story the canvas will tell is in her head, not yet committed to the gessoed fabric, not yet shared with others.

With skill that comes only from experience, the artist quickly frames the vignette then composes the picture, brush flying from palette to canvas and back again. At first, my eyes see only colors and lines. Soon, though, the colors touch my emotions, the lines trigger resonances, and I see the story elements forming in front of me. Then I realize that I am no longer in my chair, I have been drawn into the world the artist is creating. I’m not looking at it so much as I am in the painting. All of my senses are engaged as it speaks its story to me.

This is not a paean to sunny days and fluffy clouds. The artist’s brush strokes leave behind dark colors and angry lines. Their darkness, though, touches something inside me and I feel the tale unfurl, forcefully told. The artist has recently experienced the death of a loved one and is processing her grief through her art. This painting is not about the departed; it is about the grief the departed has left behind, the love which no longer has a beloved.

The picture is only half painted yet, already, it has made me feel the pain of separation. In a dark, hollowed out space on the canvas, I can see the loneliness of losing a life partner. Off to one side, a troubling cloud of doubt asks me accusingly, “Could you have kept death at bay with a different set of choices?”

As I look around the unfinished setting the artist is crafting, I realize that there are no details, no defined objects. Colors and lines coalesce here, dissolve there. Clearly, for the artist, her purpose is to inform my heart, not my head. To let me reside for a time in her world, to know some piece of what she knows. She is forging a chain linking us through shared secrets, truths hidden yet accessible to those who seek them.

I remain immersed in the canvas as the artist applies the last few brush strokes. Her palette is not all grays and umbers. Now, job almost done, she dips her brush into brighter hues. The luminous colors and upward sloping lines hint at a path to a sunnier place just beyond the frame, a path not taken today yet waiting there for another day. These colors and lines hint at new pictures to come, of canvases telling new stories and images alive with yellows and whites - evocative tints present on her palette though barely used this day.

The artist puts down her brush, sets aside her palette then steps back to look at the still wet canvas. I find myself back in the studio. The hard, wooden seat of my chair reconnects me to reality though, in a very real way, the resonant world of the canvas remains inside me, still informing my senses. We do not speak. The painting has rendered the artist’s story more tellingly than any spoken words could. The drying paint will preserve and retell the tale to all who view it.

My eyes reach out to those of the artist to let her know, “I heard your story.” Her lips curl up slightly in an enigmatic smile as she waves her arm around the studio with its mute, draped easels. I understand that there is more to her than this one story but that will be all for today. With a nod of appreciation, I turn and see myself out.

Now home, I unlock my door and step into the empty hallway, emptied by the recent loss of my own beloved. I listen expectantly for the familiar sounds of her presence, but there are none. I look hopefully into the rooms opening off the hallway, thinking she will be there waiting for me. One by one, each void reminds me of the hollow space where my heart used to be. On impulse, I gently call out to her, words of greeting I have spoken a thousand times before. The silent echoes of my “I’m home!” come back at me in crushing waves of grief that threaten to sweep me down the hallway, to force me out through the still open door behind me.

Immediately, I am transported back to the artist’s studio, back inside the painting. All the emotions, all the pain the colors and lines evoked there come rushing back. Once again, they resonate within me; grief, loneliness, and guilt all roil together in that dark, empty place inside me. I reach out to where my beloved should be longing for a comforting caress. Beside me, I see the artist in her studio also plaintively reaching out.

Suddenly, the hidden truth is revealed. The artist’s story and my story are one and the same. This was our friend’s purpose in sending me to the studio, to have me experience the artist painting my story, our shared story. The artist and I are thus bonded, at once both creator and beholder, storyteller and audience.

That knowledge is somehow reassuring; I sense the painting dissolving, revealing my hallway behind it. I look around me, the once familiar space now foreign. My home is strangely stark as I removed all traces of her; all the triggers ae gone yet, somehow, she remains a presence.

I realize I have mindlessly walked from the hallway into the kitchen where we shared so many meals. I am hollow inside but not hungry. In front of me is a window; however, the dim light which filters in through the crack between the drawn drapes brings no warmth. Looking around, I wonder how the once-white cabinets turned dingy gray, whose heavy tread left the umber stains of red clay soil on the tiles beneath my feet.

I tilt my head as I recognize the gray and umber as tints from the artist’s palette. That sense of connection draws me back inside the painting, kitchen smells replaced by those of oil and linseed varnish. I once again hear the painting’s story in my inner ear. I follow the dramatic brushstrokes recalling their creation. Then, memory refreshed, my eyes lock on the upper corner. The luminous colors and upward sloping lines have caught my attention, lifting me with them. I am pulled upward, seemingly headed out of the vignette’s frame when, with a palpable shudder, I am stopped, left suspended. The painting has started me along this path, but the way before me has dissipated, subsumed into an amorphous blend of colors and lines that fade into the distance. The story is not yet fully told.

Time has seemingly stopped, but the painting continues to speak to me. As it whispers, I understand fully why I was guided to the artist’s studio. The grief that bound me to the artist as she painted my story, the resonant emotions which drew me into the frame of the vignette, everything we shared is part of the transcendent human story, All paintings share a common palette; all stories tell of universal experiences. I see that the path ahead doesn’t truly end, that my life need not be held in suspension. The amorphous colors and lines before me are guideposts put there by the artist for me to finish my story.

This realization returns me to my kitchen with a new sense of purpose. I stride to the window and grasp the tightly drawn curtains. Their fabric has been both a shroud keeping the world from seeing my sadness and blinders that kept me from seeing the path as continuing on, as leading up and out. I throw open the curtains and there, unveiled before me, are all the wonderous, luminous colors from the artist’s palette. I turn back to my kitchen, to cabinets white and tiles unblemished again. Suddenly, I am hungry.

 

Epilogue

The sun and the breeze feel good on my face as I stroll down the sidewalk. I shake my head, “No, thank you.” to the woman inviting me into her booth, although her colorful assortment of hand-made children’s toys strikes a chord of nostalgia. I don’t know why my feet guided me along this set of streets this morning, but their serendipity was rewarded when they chanced upon this street fair. The vendor’s pop-up tents are random blotches of primary colors - reds, greens, and blues – while the not quite perfect lines they form stretch out for several city blocks. The sun is not yet high yet the path between the booths is choked with people viewing the wares.

I step off the sidewalk, into the throng, and feel myself nudged along by its slow, pulsing pace. I’m not looking for anything still I welcome the distraction. As I wend my way from booth to booth, I have a creeping sense of déjà vu. I have been to street fairs before, but that’s not it. I look up and it hits me. This is the neighborhood the artist, a friend of a friend, lives in. I came here, to her studio, a year ago thinking I was just coming to watch her paint.

“Has it been a year?”

“Yeah, slightly over. Yup, there’s the side street; her garret apartment’s halfway down the block on the left.”

“I wonder if she has a booth at the fair?”

“Nah, that would be too much of a coincidence.”

My inner dialog is interrupted as I am jostled by a couple with a dog. A beige and white Bernedoodle tugs on its leash. They remind me of my just-married son and his wife; their Bernie is named Montana after the place they got engaged. This couple nods its permission and I bend down to exchange greetings with Hanna who rewards me with a wet kiss.

My spirits lifted, I continue to make my way down the clogged street. Looking left at white frothy seascapes and right at smiling faces arrayed in family portraits, I realize the artists’ booths have been clustered here. My walls have no more space for acquisitions, but I pause at each tent for a few moments, scanning the art, waiting for something to speak to me.

A yellow and white striped tent breaks the pattern of solid colors, its joyous tones matching my mood. On a whim, I step inside glancing around for the artist. They must have stepped away as I have the empty booth to myself. The artwork, oils on canvas, is propped up on an array of easels. They are all abstracts, paintings whose colors and lines speak to the heart, not the head. They each tell a different story yet, in each, there is a message of hope.

As I scan the paintings in quiet contemplation, the sense of déjà vu returns, stronger now. I have seen these easels; I have seen these canvases, but they were all draped at the time. All but one. Then I see it. It is in the back of the booth, displayed yet sequestered, silhouetted as if it is there not to be sold but rather to tell its story. The predominant grays and umbers still resonate inside me; now, however, so do the luminous tints that lead up and out of the frame.

“That’s what is different!” I exclaim to the empty tent. When I saw it being painted, it wasn’t yet framed. I bend and look closer. The stained, rosewood frame has a brass plate at the bottom. I lean in intrigued, wondering what title the artist has given this piece, the one that bonds me to her through its universal story. The warmth of connection floods my body as I read the plaque. Not a title, the artist painted my story and now has captured its message:

“Grief is love which has lost its beloved.”

I smile; actually, it is more like a grimace softened by an upward turn in the corner of my mouth. When this picture was painted, I had lost my beloved. This painting had opened the curtains of grief for me and let me see the rays of hope awaiting me on my path. A year later, that path has guided my feet to this street fair, to the booth of the artist who painted my story – the story of our shared grief. My grief isn’t gone, but it is more like an annoying relative as now there is a certain comforting sense of familiarity when it comes. The warmth of acceptance takes the edge off the pain of its presence.

Something about the frame, though, is pinging a faint memory. Rosewood. Rose. That’s it! My friend had filled me in on the details. After I shared how I sat silently in the artist’s studio as she painted my story. After I told my friend about the experience, of how, as the artist was capturing her emotions on the canvas, I had been drawn into the canvas. After I related how the colors and lines had immersed me in the shared story of grief, my friend told me the artist’s beloved was named Rose. With this wordless gesture - an ungilded, rosewood frame - the artist turned this canvas, the embodiment of her sense of loss, into a tribute to what was lost. Now, I understand why this painting is in the booth. An art critic might judge this canvas as the best work the artist has ever created, but those of us who have lived inside its world know the real reason she will forever hold it close.