27 POSSESS AND DEVASTATE
27
P OSSESS AND D EVASTATE
Our final critique as Rotham students unfolded with the mournful quiet of a vigil.
Amrita went first. She had only one new painting to show—but it was a massive stretch of good, thick paper, the kind that made me marvel when I touched it, heavy and creamy and made for marking. She smoothed it across the critique wall and clipped it into place, taking care not to mar the edges.
The composition writhed with bizarre animals, legs and teeth and snouts all wrong like they’d been drawn by someone who’d never seen the real thing. Invented plants wove between them. It was mythical and entrancing, a garden of earthly delights that existed only within Amrita’s mythology, the stories she’d tell on her deathbed with her family gathered around to listen. She’d painted it all in pale washes of watercolor and the thinnest outlines, shades of orange and gold and a blue so deep it was nearly black. There was a woman on horseback, the horse’s eyes oddly human. Tigers coiled behind prey until their bodies were a spineless spiral. Stars hung in a pink sky, fire burst from a lantern, snakes wrapped around the branches of an imagined tree with bells hanging instead of leaves. Figs and apples and melons patterned the spaces in between, so vivid and detailed that I wanted to pull them from the paint and taste them.
“It’s so rich ,” Phoebe said.
Moody had her hands clasped beneath her chin, delight all over her face. “What a scale you’ve managed to accomplish, Ms. Balakrishnan. This painting is immersive. It’s exactly what I hoped you might accomplish since our first day together.”
Amrita fidgeted with the weight of the rest of our gazes on her back.
“The details really are amazing,” Veda added. “You could show me this and tell me it had been painted a thousand years ago and I’d believe you.”
“Is that a compliment?” Cameron asked. “I’d assume you were telling her it looks tired and ancient, in that case. It doesn’t really fit through a contemporary lens.”
“And how do we define contemporary, Cameron?” Moody cocked her head in question. “Isn’t it just work made by the artists of today? Aren’t we all contemporary? Art itself is inherently undefinable, a statement made by the artist regardless of depiction. A work is contemporary when it exists in context with the world we live in today. So Amrita’s piece can be considered a direct response to her interaction with the world.”
Cameron didn’t answer, just leaned forward in his seat and peered closer at the painting.
“Now, I do have questions for you,” Moody said, turning to meet Amrita’s eyes. Amrita straightened in her seat. I watched Saz shift with discomfort, as if anticipating a fight. She kept twirling a strand of hair around a finger and punctuating the twist with a hard tug.
“It’s impressive. Incredible, really. But as you’re preparing for a Solo exhibition, I want you to consider how the entire scope of your work will appear when it’s hung. How will your smaller pieces relate to this big one? What do they say to one another when displayed side by side? Are there gaps that need filling with additional larger pieces? These are all questions I want you to ask yourself.”
“Of course,” Amrita answered quietly.
“You know that my purpose is to lead you all to your best possible work. And I can see it here, in this painting,” Moody continued, her voice a little softer. “You’ve worked hard. Don’t do the pieces you’ve created an injustice.”
Amrita tried to smile. I watched it flicker over her, unsure and unsteady.
Mars was up next. I helped Amrita take her painting down, and Cameron took my place to prop up Mars’s three massive canvases, all self-portraits against intricate patterning with sections of cloth sewn into the canvas. Mars’s face stared back at us past dense fields of green, orange, and blue, the colors vibrating against the warm umbers of their cheek and shoulder and outstretched hands. They were beautiful paintings—technically well done and rich with emotion in the contortions of Mars’s body. Moody thought so, too, and said so without much critique apart from encouragements to vary the position of their body in each of the portraits to provide us with more of a story within the paintings. There was no question of quality or dedication or passion. Mars was good. The paintings were good. The work deserved to Solo.
“I want the gallery to feel like a hall of mirrors,” Mars said. “I want everyone in that room to see these paintings and feel as if they’re a part of me, like they’re seeing my face instead of their own.”
Cameron nodded sagely. Yejun got up to get a closer look at the way the fabric became a part of the painted patterns of Mars’s clothes. I didn’t envy Moody’s choice. That room was so full of desperation—each of us pushing ourselves beyond the limits of our bodies to try and make our lasting impact. Four years of work. What was it all for, if it would only be one of us hanging in that gallery? What did we have to prove to anyone other than ourselves?
“Jo?”
I looked up, surprised, and Moody’s eyes narrowed with a flicker of concern. “I said, are you ready to go next?”
Finch’s hand brushed my elbow, her voice suddenly beside my ear. “Come on, I’ll help you set up.”
I collected my work—five paintings, smaller than my usual work, all rolled up in one stack of unstretched canvas. I gave some to Finch and kept a few for myself. She spared them a glance and frowned, something changing in her face. But she went where I pointed her to and began to hang them without question.
Two of the paintings were exactly as I had left them: the piece with Caroline and Finch in the Manor, and the one of Amrita on the couch. They were packed with color and invented atmospheres, their figures illuminated by hundreds of invented candles with the same chiaroscuro of a Renaissance painting. But the other three were new, even to me. I hadn’t painted them.
Except, I had. They carried the same loose brushwork and dark palettes I always painted with, shades of blue and green and brown interspersed with light. But the images were unfamiliar. One was just a pair of hands in an otherwise entirely black space. The fingertips were lovingly rendered, palms turned to the viewer, nails rising beyond the ridges of flesh. A fresh wound marked the hand on the right. That was what told me they were Caroline’s hands—the only one of us that hadn’t slit the left.
Beside that painting was another flat expanse of blue-black. The only shift in image was the glimpse of a head peering out from a slash in the canvas, like Caroline’s rising above the surface of Lake Michigan. Her exposed eyes stared back at the viewer. Challenged us to reach for her and pull her free of that descent.
The final piece depicted an animal curled on its side, something indistinctly mammalian and wounded. There was no detail in the creature itself, but the area surrounding it was so dense with texture that it emphasized a flat black outline of the animal’s body. Burgundy paint marked out the keening shape of its head and the tusks affixed to its jaw. In its stomach sat a pale white house; just like Caroline’s on the shore. Its windows were full of gold light. I imagined we were safe inside of it, sleeping in the belly of that beast.
Moody didn’t say anything for a long time. The only sounds were Grainer’s ominous creaking, the shuffle of someone’s shoes against the floor, and my own too fast, panicking inhale.
“These are a departure,” Moody started. Then she faltered. “They’re ... frightening.”
Someone snickered. The memory of “Prozac Kozak” made me flush, and I swallowed around my dry tongue. Time felt liquid and far away from me. How had my life continued without my noticing? When could I have created these?
“I don’t mean to say frightening in a way that discourages you,” Moody continued. “Plenty of painters have depicted scenes of horror and violence throughout time, and these paintings evoke some of those darker masters: Caravaggio, Francis Bacon, Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Henry Fuseli. They’ve all painted variations on nightmare. And that’s really what I’m getting from this work, Joanna. I feel that you’ve entrenched us in your own nightmares.”
Maybe no one else could see what followed me, but I still brought it into every room. I didn’t know if the Boar King was Kolesnik or the devil or some other manifestation we’d raised from the ritual. That shadow was omnipresent. The paintings said so too.
“Are you trying to scare the viewer?” Phoebe asked politely. “It’s working, by the way. You scared me.”
Moody smiled. “Fear is as palpable as beauty or adoration. Sometimes, even more so. If your goal is to strike fear, Joanna, then I think you’ve succeeded. But I’d like to see how you discuss the work in your thesis paper, and how these newer paintings tie in with your previous portraiture.”
Moody got to her feet and turned her back on my paintings, facing our circle.
“Between today and next week’s Solo selection, there will be no further public critiques. After the choice is made, we will begin curation for the Grainer Gallery show, so please consider two pieces you would be interested in sharing with the public. I think you are a talented group, and it will be incredibly difficult to decide which student will represent us as our Soloist.”
Her smile was genuine, but her eyes were a little sad. “We’ve endured some tough obstacles this year. I’m very sorry you all have had to navigate your final months at Rotham under the weight of grief. But I hope your time here has imbued you with new passion and the lasting drive to create.”
We were a chorus of nods back at her. Caroline stood like a statue and stared into my dark depiction of her wounded hands. Finch bounced her knee relentlessly. Saz kept twisting that piece of hair between her fingertips, and Amrita sat still and straight, as if she’d even slowed her breath.
Moody clapped her hands together. “Have a good weekend. I’ll see you bright and early on Monday.”
We gathered around the Manor’s dining table that night with our laptops a glowing circle before us, the screens touching like points on a star. Half-empty bottles of wine made our centerpiece. Saz stood and poured another glass and raised hers over her head.
We’d barely spoken after that final critique. What was there to say? We were all so aware of one another and that power we held between us. So conscious of the ways we had hurt each other and the ways we would go on to keep swinging the blade.
“Regardless of what happens,” Saz started. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Regardless of what happens with Solo next week, and regardless of how weird and awful this year has been, I just want you guys to know that I love you. All of you. Like, I’m fucking obsessed with you.”
Caroline’s distant eyes were painted pale blue by her laptop. Finch sat across from her at the table, hands behind her head and elbows splayed wide.
“You say that like we’re never going to see each other again,” I said.
Amrita closed her laptop halfway. “I mean, of course we’ll see each other, but things are going to be different after this year. We won’t live together like this. No more school and no more assignments and no more studio space.”
“Okay, vibe killer,” Saz sighed.
“We’re at our prime,” Caroline said, low in her throat. “Have we peaked? Is this it?”
“No way. I’ve heard thirty is your hottest year,” Finch said.
Saz smiled. “I don’t know. If this is our prime, then I can be happy with that. I think we made the best of it.”
“This can’t be it,” Amrita said. “There has to be something better.”
What else? What could possibly be better than this, than sitting in the room with them and listening to the music we loved, warm with wine and adoration?
I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to be the only one satisfied by what I had.
“I’m going to bed,” Caroline announced with the click of her laptop shutting. “We can be sappy in the morning. It’s our last weekend before the end of the world, so let’s make it count.”
Saz dumped the rest of her wine out in the sink and trailed after Caroline up the stairs, their voices trickling down to where Finch and I still sat at the table. Amrita pushed her chair in and turned to head up to her room but gave me one last glance over her shoulder.
“You two alright?”
I nodded. “We’re fine, get some rest.”
She accepted the answer and ascended after the others. Finch started to gather her things.
“Can I walk back with you?” I asked.
Finch looked up, surprised. “You don’t have to do that. It’s not that late.”
“It’s dark. I don’t like the idea of you walking alone.”
“I’ve done it hundreds of times. Besides, if you walk me home, then you just have to turn back alone. Unless you plan on staying.” Her last words were soft, a little unsure of themselves.
“Haven’t made up my mind yet,” I answered, trying not to smile and failing. “But I’m brave. I’ll be just fine.”
Finch rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure, whatever you say.” She inclined her head toward the door. “You coming?”