Chapter Nine
D on’t think too much about it,” Ms. Moreno instructed. “We’re just making marks on a page.”
It was Monday night, a week after Stacey attended the first Art Escape, and she and Ms. Moreno were again the only two people in the art lab. An oscillating fan buzzed in the corner, the warm breeze blowing Stacey’s fine hair across her cheeks. Her art teacher’s tight chocolatey curls were suspended atop her head, anchored with a pencil. Stacey swirled her own hair up, shoving the pointed end of a pencil through. The hair unraveled, and the pencil clanked on the floor. Stacey sheepishly picked it up and pulled her hair to one side.
“The idea of abstract art is to capture the essence of something while letting it take on a life of its own. The feeling comes from the color, the unique brushstrokes. Introducing a new way of seeing and representing something.”
Stacey struggled to understand how the squiggly pale pink marks separated by thin white lines would resemble a flower, but she dipped her brush in the rosy hue and touched the tip of her brush to the paper. Imitating her teacher’s gestures, she pressed the brush down as she pulled it in a tight curve, and lifted up again toward the end. The C-shape looked more like a pink slug than a petal to her, but she repeated the motion moving outward, adjusting the length and width for each petal so no two were identical, and the petals grew wider and longer as the blossom spread outward.
“Nice!” Ms. Moreno praised.
Stacey leaned back and squinted. “Something’s off…”
“Good eye. What do you think it is?”
“It’s…too flat, or something.”
“Exactly. It’s a beautiful color, and your brushstrokes are well executed. But without a change in hue, it has no depth. Light and dark hues create shape. The petals connect at a deeper point in the flower, while the outside edges are in the light.”
Stacey looked at the flower Ms. Moreno had set in a beaker between them, and realized that even though she’d accomplished the right shade of peachy pink, the center of the live flower was much darker, and the outside petals were nearly white. She added more magenta and deep yellow to darken her mix, and rewet the edges of her petals near the center of her blossom. Stacey touched the darker color to the inside edges. It spread and faded across the petals.
“Well done, Stacey. That’s a perfect bleed.”
Stacey rinsed her brush and swiped clean water along the outside edges of the outer petals, dabbing them with a paper towel to remove some color.
“You have great instincts,” Ms. Moreno said.
They each added two more blossoms to their paintings, and Stacey studied her trio of pale pink roses fondly.
“So, how exactly are we ‘escaping’ into these flowers?”
“Abstract art is about escaping reality while revealing universal truth.”
Stacey lifted one eyebrow and looked at her florals again. “I don’t get it.”
Ms. Moreno stood back and squinted, her right forefinger curled over her mauve lips. “Hmmm…”
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re too perfect, I think,” Ms. Moreno said.
Stacey cocked her head, searching for what Ms. Moreno saw. The flowers looked like roses, without being exact replicas. Wasn’t that what they were aiming for?
“They’re not very interesting to look at,” Ms. Moreno said.
Frustration flushed through Stacey. She’d done what she was supposed to, so why hadn’t it worked? She looked again, trying to understand what Ms. Moreno meant. Interesting or not, she’d achieved her goal of painting three roses. That should’ve been enough!
Ms. Moreno dipped a thick paintbrush in clean water and wet the area of her page around the blossoms. The flowers’ edges seeped into the water. Ms. Moreno swept the large brush through the paint, making wonky circles and broad strokes of pink around the blossoms. Working quickly, she dropped darker tones in the centers of some, straight yellow in the center of others. She grabbed a smaller brush and mixed blue with the yellow, dropping various tones of green around the pink blobs.
Foliage. Stacey was bewildered how easy it looked.
Just as with the original petals, Ms. Moreno left white spaces between each, but still allowed the leaves and flowers to touch in some spots so the colors would run.
“What do you think?” Ms. Moreno asked.
“It’s cool, but….“ Stacey tried to avoid grimacing. “It’s kinda out of control.” The intensity and chaos made Stacey uncomfortable.
“I agree! I love it. That’s exactly what the problem was before: it was way too controlled. I needed to let the painting be more free.” She pulled the pencil from atop her head, wild curls falling around her face and thin shoulders. “Messy. Natural.”
Stacey knit her brow. “I don’t think that’s what I meant.” She looked past her teacher to the stack of palettes slathered with dried paint cluttering Ms. Moreno’s desk.
Ms. Moreno shrugged and grinned. “If there was a bush of perfect roses, or a wall covered in paintings of perfect roses, they all would become really boring. A real rose bush is beautiful because of all the stages of blossoming. The ones that stand out are uniquely imperfect. That is the feeling I wanted to capture.”
“Is it okay if I don’t want to do that on mine?” Stacey could hear the crack in her voice and hoped that Ms. Moreno didn’t notice.
“Sure, Stacey. It’s your painting! You should do what you want with your work.”
They cleaned up the supplies and rinsed out the brushes. Ms. Moreno asked, “Would you like a popsicle? I thought it would be a nice treat.”
“Sure.”
Ms. Moreno leaned down to the mini fridge beside her desk. As she walked back to Stacey, she pulled open the white pouch, and split the two sticks apart. “I hope you like cherry.”
Stacey smiled. “Thanks.”
Sitting on the butcher block table across from where their paintings were resting, they let their legs swing beneath them.
“I have so many happy memories of eating these growing up,” Ms. Moreno said.
Stacey nodded, licking the length of her popsicle.
“Isn’t it funny that you can’t imagine popsicles, or remember eating them, without thinking about them dripping?”
“Yeah! That’s so true. My mom has pictures of me when I was little with my face and bathing suit stained.”
“And I bet you had a huge smile.” Ms. Moreno wiped the back of her hand across her chin, a smear of cherry syrup striping her warm brown skin. She left it and continued nibbling.
“Of course.”
“Messiness is part of what makes it so wonderful. Usually kids get in trouble for being messy. Plus you have to enjoy it quickly; that’s part of the fun. I like teaching art for the same reasons.”
“You are like the opposite of my mom. She doesn’t like messes. And she never buys popsicles anymore.”
“Have you asked why?”
Stacey shook her head. She could feel Ms. Moreno’s eyes on her as she slurped the side of her popsicle, but instead focused her attention on their paintings. She could see how Ms. Moreno had achieved the look of a full bush of roses, but each flower was different: a small tight blossom, another large and in full bloom, the third in profile with much darker hues. “I like that darker rose of yours the best.”
“Your roses are beautiful also, Stacey.”
“Thanks, but I get what you meant. I’m more drawn to your painting.”
“That’s why your self-portrait won first place, you know.”
Suddenly the sweetness in Stacey’s belly turned sour. “Huh?”
“So many students submitted beautiful artwork, but yours captured a real sense of what it’s like to be a teenage girl. The loneliness. The self-doubt and insecurity. Especially that you had crumpled the page. That spoke volumes.”
The only sound for the next minute was Stacey chewing on her popsicle stick. When it cracked and splintered between her teeth, she took it from her mouth and mumbled, “I was mad at you.”
“For taking it out of the trash and submitting it?”
“Yeah. It was really embarrassing.” She looked down at the broken and stained popsicle stick in her lap.
“I’m sorry. I wish you’d said something. I would have pulled it from the art show.”
“I was afraid you’d lower my grade if I said anything.”
“I’m sorry you thought that. I only wanted you to know how much I admired your work. I thought it deserved acknowledgement. I should have asked you.”
Stacey shrugged.
“Your feelings matter,” Ms. Moreno said. “Your feelings are important. No one should punish you for expressing them.”
Stacey’s jaw twitched. She looked up, feeling angry all over again. Desperate to change the subject, she softened her voice. “Does yours have a joke?”
“My popsicle stick?” Ms. Moreno asked. She turned it over and lifted it to read it under the overhead fluorescent light. “Uh, yeah. ‘How is a bad joke like a dull pencil?’”
“It has no point.”
“Right.” She smiled, then nodded. “What’s yours?”
“Why was the artist hauled to jail?”
Ms. Moreno shrugged.
“To face the mosaic.”
Ms. Moreno chuckled. “Does it really say that?”
Stacey shook her head and showed her teacher the decimated popsicle stick. “It says ‘Why’d the banana’ and ‘Because it.’ I can’t read the rest.”
“Hmmm… Why’d the banana…split?”
“Because it was in sundae school,” Stacey said.
“Because it saw the ice scream.” Ms. Moreno lifted her hands to her face and held her mouth in an “O” like the Edvard Munch painting.
“Because it was sick of being bunched up.” Stacey squeezed her arms and shoulders together like she was in a confined space.
“Because it was afraid of getting crushed nuts!” Ms. Moreno put her hands over her lap, and Stacey opened her eyes wide in shock.
They both laughed.
“I’m glad you came back tonight,” Ms. Moreno said. “I missed painting with you the last week.”
“Me too. Thanks, Ms. Moreno.”
“You can call me Sage if you want.”
Stacey wrinkled her nose. “Uh… no. I can’t.” She hopped off the table and headed for the door. “But thanks.”
“O-kay…,” Ms. Moreno said over her shoulder, a fallen expression clouding her face. “One last thing, Stace. Remember, whether we like it or not, everyone’s life is messy.”
Stacey was taken aback. “Yeah…” Sure. But not as messy as mine. “See ya.”
Ms. Moreno turned away and walked to her desk.
As Stacey walked to her car she realized she couldn’t remember her teacher ever looking sad before. The hot night air was still and insects buzzed in the mustard weed bushes beside the parking spaces. The lightness she had felt after the first time she painted with Ms. Moreno hadn’t returned. Everything felt heavier and Stacey wasn’t sure she liked it.