River
. . .
a long week
I had my first legitimate art show at twenty-six, hosted by a small gallery in London. I’d already made a name for myself as a muralist and graffiti artist, but this was the first time my paintings were on public display.
The gallery was packed with friends, collectors, and critics. Everyone was chatting and laughing and drinking. The energy was electric. I felt like I was on top of the world, like I’d finally found my purpose.
I drank too much champagne and woke up the next morning hungover in a stranger’s bed, unable to remember how the night ended or how many paintings had sold. On my cab ride home, I messaged the gallery and found out.
None.
A few hours and countless text messages later, I had confirmation my worst nightmare was unfolding. All the smiles and handshakes, all the interest and praise… all of it was a lie.
Behind my back, everyone had been laughing at me.
The first scathing review was published online that afternoon. Several more followed over the next days. Peers I’d thought were friends stoked the gossip, eager to see me fail. The next week, the gallery sent me an invoice for shipping my paintings back to me.
The day they arrived at my studio, I got drunk before opening the giant boxes and removing each canvas. I spread them out on the floor. Stared at them for a while. Drank some more. Then I grabbed a knife and a hammer and savagely destroyed each and every one.
When I was done, the canvases were in shreds and the frames reduced to kindling. Drenched in sweat, my arms bloody from half a dozen cuts and splinters, I fell to my knees and sobbed until I could barely breathe. Until there were no more tears inside me, only fatigue and resignation.
I was blowing my nose into the hem of my T-shirt and contemplating buying a one-way ticket to Seattle when my studio door opened.
Gideon Masters walked inside.
I knew who he was, of course. Everyone did. The man was a legend, one of the most lauded and accomplished painters in the world. What I couldn’t fathom was why he was here, grinning at me like I’d correctly answered a question I hadn’t heard him ask.
Much later, he told me he’d been curious about me since he’d seen my murals in Paris.
When the fallout from my show reached him, he felt compelled to track me down.
He figured he’d see how I was handling everything and possibly offer some advice.
But his motives changed when he saw me sitting in the wreckage of my art, looking equally destroyed.
His first words to me were, “I see you’ve figured it out.”
Bitterness quickly replaced my surprise and awe. “What? That I’m a failure?”
Gideon tilted his head, copper curls afire in the sunlight falling through the studio’s high windows. Eyes bright with curiosity roamed the floor before finding me again.
“I don’t see failure,” he said mildly. “I see an artist who just learned what many never do—what Picasso truly meant when he said, ‘Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.’”
I squinted at him, still drunk enough to wonder if I was hallucinating the conversation. Like he knew what I was thinking, Gideon chuckled.
Then he blew my mind.
“Come to Paris. Give me six months, and I guarantee galleries will be begging to show your work.”
I scrambled to my feet. “You’re offering to mentor me?”
He nodded, the smile on his face sibylline and slightly terrifying—an expression I would come to know well over the following months.
“Don’t bother asking me why. I won’t tell you yet.
I may never. But I’ll give you this much—a taste of my mentorship, if you will.
The true artist is a phoenix. We build and burn, over and over again, in order to experience and capture the world anew.
You’ve burned, and now you have a choice.
Will you build again, or will you bury yourself in ash until the world fades to shades of gray? ”
I stared at him for a few seconds, then shook my head. “Sorry, but I’m way too drunk to understand that.”
Gideon’s laughter rang out, so loud and boisterous I couldn’t help laughing with him.
He strode across the corpses of my paintings and stopped right in front of me.
This close, I could see the silver in his hair and the faint lines on his face.
But mostly, I noticed his eyes. A shade lighter than mine, they brimmed with life, wisdom, and peace.
He extended a hand, and I wiped my palm on my pants before clasping it.
“Will you accept my mentorship, River?”
Not trusting myself to speak without making a fool of myself, I nodded fast. He offered that slightly terrifying smile.
“To rising from the ashes.”
In the week since Rue left me reeling on the porch, I’ve done a lot of thinking. Mostly in bed at night as I wait for the sound of her sneaking into her cabin. No matter how hard I try, I can’t fall asleep until her bed creaks.
I’ve thought about Gideon quite a bit—his role in my life, first as my mentor and then a friend.
Without his intervention that day, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to pick up a paintbrush again.
But what I’ve come to value even more than his artistic guidance, what I’ve thought about most, are all the little wisdoms he’s shared over the years.
Like the metaphor of artists as phoenixes.
Create and destroy.
Build and burn.
Rise from the ashes or become them.
Eight years and hundreds of paintings later, I know the cycle well.
The pain and necessity of it. The discipline required to balance sensitivity with perseverance and passion with intent.
To embrace failure as opportunity. To welcome metamorphosis as dead trees welcome fire, knowing something new will soon grow.
I’ve never struggled this much to rise from the ashes, but I’ve also never been buried so deep.
A few weeks ago—submerged in self-pity after a failed attempt to sketch something, anything—I asked Gideon if he thought my art had broken when my heart did.
In his typical way, his answer was more philosophical than practical.
“When I was younger, I also believed the source of art was the heart. But I was wrong. Art comes from the gut, River. From our deepest center of knowing and identity. We can’t hope to truly see the world, much less share pieces of it, unless we’re willing to face ourselves first.
“What breaks art isn’t pain but self-doubt we’ve watered over time with our regrets. And regret is born from the unwillingness to accept lessons from the past.
“My advice is to start with some cannibalistic self-reflection. Starve your regret with honesty and your doubts will wither.”
Unable to stomach his implication that I wasn’t being honest with myself, I told him if I’d wanted vague, pseudo-spiritual advice, I would have called my psychic grandmother. Then I stomped out of the room like an angry child and didn’t speak to him for two days.
I still owe him an apology for that. Now I owe another one because, as usual, he was right.
I haven’t been honest with myself for a long time.
For too many years, I defined myself through my art instead of the other way around. It was safer, easier, than facing myself. My loneliness. My fear that I’d never be seen—and that if I was seen, I’d never be accepted. That I’d forever be on the outside looking in.
My perspective grew so warped that somewhere along the way, I decided I was done looking for the love I wanted. The love shared by my parents, by Wilder and Eva, by Gideon and Deirdre. If I couldn’t find it, I’d create it.
In my hubris, I did exactly that.
There’s no question Elise betrayed me in a vile way, but I betrayed her too.
From our first date, I was more focused on our composition than our truth.
I stretched and stapled trust like a canvas.
Mixed and swiped my way into a tableau of happiness.
Added dimension for milestones. Smeared pigment over imperfections.
I painted Elise as who I wanted her to be instead of who she was, and in return, I offered a flawless facsimile of myself instead of the honest, imperfect man.
A brutal epiphany, but unfortunately not the worst.
The worst was finally admitting to myself that the pain of losing Elise was the same pain I felt kneeling in the remains of the paintings I destroyed. I wasn’t mourning her. I was mourning my failure to create a masterpiece.
I can’t say I’ve been freed of every regret, or all my doubts have withered, but I have started feeling more like myself again. And it’s not because I actively decided to be honest with myself. Left to my own devices, I’d still be swimming in shades of gray.
I had nothing to do with it. It was her. Rue St. James in all her stubborn, intuitive, capricious glory.
It was seeing her waiting on the steps of our cabin, mud flaking off her arms and legs, and her refusal to look at me when I called her on it.
That damned flower crown, now pressed into the pages of my sketchbook.
Her expressions, moving like rapids between relief, annoyance, reticence, and something that—if I didn’t know better—I’d think was desire.
And it was her eyes, filled with familiar fire one minute and worry for me the next.
Real worry. Not on behalf of Ivy or my family, but on behalf of herself.
I’ve relived our conversation a hundred times, wishing I’d reacted differently to her questions.
That I’d softened instead of deflected, been open rather than defensive.
But I dismissed her instead, then made that flippant comment about implosion sounding messy.
And now I’m tormented by the anguish in her eyes when she said it always is.
That was the moment I started questioning everything. Her pain—so vast, desolate, unremitting—diminished mine by comparison. What were a bruised heart and ego compared to what she carried? Nothing. A tickle weighed against an amputation.
The bitter irony of it is I can’t even thank her for what she did for me because she’s avoided me ever since. When I do see her, usually in the Lodge, she won’t even look at me.
I don’t know how to fix it.
Or even if I should.
Rue doesn’t owe me her forgiveness or her time. I’ve never acted worthy of either, never shown her that her opinion matters to me.
But it always has.
She has always mattered.