The Writer and The Artist: The Artist

Chapter 1: The Artist

 

THE ARTIST

 

1

 

‘All done!’ she exclaimed as she placed her worn paintbrush into a jar of murky water, next to a wooden palette blotched with bright acrylic paint.

            She glanced at her husband, who lay sprawled across the living room sofa, scrawling in today’s diary entry. He had waited many hours to see the final masterpiece, appearing fidgety and somewhat anxious as though there were a slight chance he may be disappointed. Consistently, throughout the morning and afternoon he had attempted a sneak peek at the work in progress, but was always thwarted with a harsh telling off and a shameful (and literal) slap on the wrist.

            Laura moved her wooden stool back a few metres across the room to view the completed work, on a stretched square canvas perched on her wooden easel. It would take a little while for the final layer of acrylic paint to dry, but much quicker than if she was using oils. She enjoyed the fast pace of using acrylics; whilst a layer of paint dried she could easily plan the next coating of paint before applying it.

She grinned extensively, as did John when he went and stood behind her. His hands caressed her tired bare shoulders.

            ‘It’s perfect,’ John remarked, as he leant down to kiss her on the forehead. ‘It’s just as I saw it to be.’

            She bit her lip with delight in pleasing her husband. She closed her eyes with a lustful longing. She sensed she would sleep well tonight.

            ‘What shall we call it?’ she then asked, relieving herself of such temptation. She tilted her head to one side. ‘Reaching your goal? No…a field of accomplishment? Conquest? Glory?’

            Immediately, her husband nodded. ‘I like that last one; The Field of Glory.’ He gave a comforting smile as he squeezed her shoulders gently. ‘I love you so much.’

            She gazed up at him. Their eyes met and the world seemed to dissolve around them. ‘I love you too,’ she replied.

He bent down and kissed her softly on the lips. It was a kiss of passion; comfort; longing. It was true love.

 

The Field of Glory; the painting depicted a large open field, under a cloudy magenta sky. In the distance behind the field were forest trees with leaves the colours of deep purples and reds. The grass of the field was a pale yellow; faint strokes of red portrayed the shadow of each individual blade. Flowers were deployed across the field: annuals; biennials and shrubs, some in colours of white and dark green, whilst others were painted in shades of blue and orange.

            In the middle of the field were four men, each holding hands and dancing together in a circle. One was a young child wearing a blue t-shirt and shorts; one was an older boy wearing a black and white school uniform and gelled-back hair; another was a grown adult wearing a neatly trimmed groom’s suit, his hair also neatly combed to reveal his forehead.

            The fourth person of the circle is the husband of Laura Henderson as he is today. But what John Henderson really loved about this painting was the way Laura painted each individual’s face exactly as they should be. For each of them represented – were! – the same person: himself. The day as a kid he received his first kiss; the moment in school he won an achievement award; the day he married his beautiful wife; and the moment today he discovered he had received his long-awaited promotion at work.

            The Field of Glory; that was what he saw.

            That was what she painted.

 

2

 

Laura and John Henderson have been happily married for nearly fourteen years. They are both in their late thirties and they are still going strong. The first time they met, both in their late adolescence, was in a busy London café. There had been an instant attraction between them. Their marriage has continued to blossom through every year together. They are, without doubt, soul mates.

            This was always expressed when Laura paints a picture, but not just any picture. At least once a week, at some point or another, John sees what he calls an image in his mind. Except he does not just see this image, he experiences it. For John to see an image is like for those people who have the astounding ability to sense colour while listening to music. Every image he sees is related to his feelings and emotions at the time. Such as today; the feeling of gaining the triumph – the glory! – of promotion. He saw the scene of the field and four versions of himself, smiling and dancing in unity to celebrate yet another moment his life where John had reached another satisfying achievement.

            And Laura paints it exactly as though she were looking into the depths of his mind. The attention to every single detail was remarkable. John remembered visualising the greatest smile on the groom. But it was a particular sort of smile (one of smug happiness), a detail that John had deliberately forgotten to mention to Laura, as a form of test to see if she would misplace it. But there it was, brought out in acrylic, smiling back at him as though to say ‘Look whose smug now?’

            But there was more to that smile. It was the smile on his face when the vicar declared him and Laura to be husband and wife. Forever. It had been one of the most glorified moments of his life. Laura knew this well, every time John would react to her paintings and say ‘It’s perfect’ and then announce his declaration of complete love for her.

 

For Laura to paint his picture is indeed a gift in itself. The first time she did it was merely on a whim when she longed to paint something new and fresh, that she could dig her nails in to and scratch out a hidden gem. John had arrived home from a terrible day at work. He went immediately to find his wife, who was in the kitchen making the evening dinner. Before she could even say ‘Hey, how was your day?’ he had turned her to face him and forced her into a tight hug, burying his face in her shoulder.

            ‘Baby,’ she said worryingly, ‘what’s wrong? Had a bad day?’

            He nodded into her beautifully pink skin.

            It had not been the first time John had seen a picture in his mind, yet it was the first time he mentioned one to Laura. As they hugged, the image flickered into his mind like a lonely Polaroid. He concentrated on it for a moment, focusing on every minute element. He had always been intrigued by this unusual ability and yet as a child he thought it to be common amongst human beings, like how you depict characters and scenes from a film only hours after you saw it at the cinema. But this was different. It was a sensuous portal directly into the world of his mind.

            For some time they hugged silently, as John concentrated on the image whilst Laura wondered what on earth had happened to dig himself into her.

            Smelling the beans on the stove beginning to burn, she broke the hug and the silence: ‘So what happened?’

            With traces of the picture still in his thoughts, like the remainders of a dream upon awaking, John gave a little smile and said, ‘I’ll describe it to you.’

           

For the next five minutes, as Laura finished off the Friday fry-up of sausages; chips; mushrooms; and slightly overcooked beans, John sat on the kitchen work surface and described exactly what he saw, leaving no detail to waste. Two days later, whilst John was at work and Laura, who works as a freelance illustrator, stayed at home, she continued to ponder over her husband’s slightly obscure yet intriguing portrayal of his depression that day. She had had little to no inspiration over what to paint. She worked primarily as a children’s book illustrator, designing looks for characters and bringing them to life, atop beautifully settings blended from watercolours. But she also loved to paint with acrylics, especially on days which Laura classed as ‘holiday’.

Today she had decided was a day to paint.

            She always worked in her living room when painting; she enjoyed observing the many ornaments they had collected over the last few years, a hobby they both loved to indulge in on the occasional weekend. They helped her to concentrate on the painting, by keeping her focused on the physical, rather than other immaterial concerns. The large wooden easel was always set up in the middle of the room atop a large white sheet dotted with discarded paint. The back of the easel faced the front window and was beside the twin sofa, for it was usually where her husband would sit whilst she painted. His presence sometimes aided her concentration, especially when she found a particular painting difficult to attend to. Seemingly looking at him could provide a motivation to finish a painting before the day was through.

            She sat on her wooden stool in front of the easel, which now held a large square flat canvas, beautifully pure and white as it was bought. She placed several artistic materials on the desk to the left of her: her wooden palette; various acrylic colours (her favourite type of paint for its quick-dry texture and bright colours); a selection of gouache paints; some sketching pencils to outline the picture; a putty rubber for mistakes; a clear jar of tap water; and her red apron. She put on the apron and tied it securely around her waist and attended to the canvas.

            Several minutes later, she continued to stare at the canvas, as blank as her current inspiration. Although that was not completely true; one idea for a painting was lodged unwillingly in her consciousness. The picture that John had described was too different and enticing to forget about. She had to paint it! It would be criminal not to, she thought, as she placed a sketching pencil in one hand.

Using the pencil she started to draw everything her husband had said. She forced herself to remember it all, starting from the background to the foreground, a technique she worked best with. She only lowered her pencil away from the canvas when the sketch itself was complete.

It had been nearly 11am when she had sat down with her canvas. Now it was 12:27am on her digital watch. She placed the sketching pencil down on the desk and rubbed her aching hand. She needed a break. Switching the television on in the far left corner of the living room, she got up and passed through to the hallway beside the front door and into the kitchen, where she made herself a sandwich. She then returned to the living room and sat down on the sofa. She started to watch the drivel of daytime television, wondering how many more housing and antique programmes there could be. Every so often her eye flickered towards the easel. She attempted to concentrate harder on the television, yet her gaze was constantly drawn back towards the canvas, standing uselessly. She could not ignore it any longer. Placing the half-eaten sandwich down on the sofa, she immediately switched off the television and sat back down on the stool; already working out in her mind what colours she would apply first.

 

John worked for a local publishing company as a commissioning editor, doing Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Driving home for work after yet another long day on the job, he longed to see his wife and ask her how her day went. What he had not expected was a show-and-tell.

            He opened the front door and saw it straight away: the painting perched on its easel facing the door. He nearly dropped his briefcase at he sight of it. Not only was it so bold and colourful, yet it was as real as the moment John had seen it only two days ago. His mouth dropped open; he could not mutter a single word from between his lips.

It was the scene of his ‘bad day’, which coincidentally became the name for this particular painting. It was typically a dark picture to encompass the depression of that moment. The scene was obviously of him, as he sat by his desk on a swivel office chair, all of which were floating in midair. His hands are placed above his head, tearing shreds of black hair from his scalp. Around him is a void, a purple and black portal that creviced into what could be hell itself.

Around him in the distance are several creatures: harpies on one side and gargoyles on the other. The harpies are dressed in shirts and ties and represent his managers, as John had described. They each hold cordless phones and appear to be screeching down them. Fittingly, on John’s desk are a dozen black phones, each ringing from the orders of the managerial harpies. The gargoyles are his clients, wearing casual clothing and wielding tubes of ruffled papers, which to John represent manuscripts he had been chasing up all that day. Together, they looked like modern representations of the good and evil conscience you might see characterised in cartoons. Except, to John, both sides were evil.

Eventually, after some time gawping at the picture, he noticed his wife, sitting halfway up the staircase behind the picture. She had her chin and hands rested upon her knees. ‘Sorry I stole your idea,’ she said, as his mouth continued to hang.

‘How did you…?’ he spoke, before glaring at the painting again. After some thought, he said, ‘Well I’ll give you one thing, dearest.’

‘Yeah?’ she replied, recognising the approval in his voice.

He smiled. ‘You’re one talented artist.’

 

3

 

And as such, one conversation over the painting led to another painting, and then another painting. In fact, there have been so many since then that the spare room on the ground floor had become a miniature gallery of all Laura’s work. They call it the view room, a place where John can view what he believes to be the many secrete regions of his subconscious mind.  Sometimes he takes half an hour or so at the weekend to sit alone in the room and gaze at each individual picture, to remember exactly what he had felt the moment he had seen that image. Not only do they remind him of his particular gift, they remind him of the unbreakable bond between himself and his wife. These paintings are a gateway into both his mind and soul.

            He did the same thing the weekend after he received his promotion. He stared at the Field of Glory longer than those previously, for it portrayed not only his current happiness but the happiness contained within his past. Seeing the four John Henderson’s dancing together, he believed a future John Henderson would be dancing amongst that Field of Glory. Everything seemed so precise: his wonderful house; his wonderful job (gargoyles and harpies aside) and of course; his wonderful wife. Nothing could destroy this perfect picture.

            But then the accident happened.