Masterpiece

A short glimpse at the life of a painter, and a little something more.

                At a much younger age, the world was his canvas. He ran around the blocks near home with a bundle of grass he had tied to a stick, waving it around in the air. That’s what he had looked like to the other boys on his street, anyway. Crazy. The one who was never interested in chasing after a ball or dancing past one another in fake sword fights on the driveway. To him, though, they were the crazy ones. They couldn’t see his world. In his hand he held his brush, and with it he painted them all. He created the jeering looks he was greeted with every time he stepped outside. The carefully styled hair on the boy next door was his doing, his brush strokes twirling into the glossy meticulous look.

            Now, though, now is different. Now his apartment is what his world once was. He races around the room with dozens of brushes, some the size of his hand and some smaller than a blade of grass. Palettes litter the floor like colorful lily pads, with him as the frog. In some places he slathers the surface in black, making way for a new galaxy in his universe of color. In others he dips a brush in purple and slings it at the wall, and then again in green and blue and yellow and everything he has until he’s standing in front of one giant, dripping, crisscrossing, beautiful mess. Then, he’s across the room with the smallest brush he can find; adding curvature to the nose of the most stunning woman art has ever given life to.

            He paints more than gorgeous women, stars, and abstract swirls of color. He paints his emotions. He gives life to himself now, like he gave life to those boys on his street as he painted his own world. As he throws the globs of color at the wall, his face contorts. The eyebrows furrow and the jaw locks. The usual soft contours harden, and the playful diamond glimmer in his eyes dulls to a look of tarnished steel. As he finishes and moves across the room to the woman, the stiffness in his gait loosens and he forces himself to release the brush from his still angrily clenched fist. It clatters to the concrete floor, stabbing the silence as a knife might.

            He takes a small brush from the ground and pulls a palette from a nearby stool. His arm jerks back and forth as he defines the sharp angles of the cheekbones. Gradually he comes to a stop, drops the brush, and reaches up to the top of the woman’s head. He traces the flow of her hair, and as his hand passes her ear his eyes come alive. He caresses her shoulder and relaxes his own. He comes to the end, right at her elbow, and presses his hand down firmly on the wall�"and then a smile, ever so slight, graces the masterpiece that is him.

Author's Note

What do you think of my adverb usage? More than once I've been told that I overuse them.