Chapter 5 #3
“Suzanne shocked people. But these men working are different from the women we usually see in paintings. When men are painted in the nude they’re virile and strong, they’re in motion, they’re at war. Female nudes are soft and compliant. Have you noticed that?”
“Every time.” I pause. “I’m an artist,” I whisper softly, almost to myself.
It just comes out. I nearly said it more than a dozen times in the museum, but I couldn’t.
Not in front of the art. Often I feel demoralized in front of the paintings of artists who’ve succeeded because I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to make a living at this.
Stella turns her head and smiles up at me. “I thought you might be.”
“May I?” I reach out for the piece of paper. She nods.
It’s so fragile in my hands. I trace my finger along the fine lines of the man’s ass. My mind drifts again to Matthew’s matinee-idol looks, the firmness of his body, very different from the looseness of Pascal’s overly confident nude form.
Stella yawns and tries to stand, but the effort is too much for her.
“Can you help me up, my dear? I want to take off the rest of my face before we keep chatting.”
I bend over to put my hands beneath her arms. She’s so light, I barely need to exert any effort to lift her to the chair in front of the vanity.
While she busies herself with her makeup remover and creams, I look around at the papers strewn all over the floor.
Some appear to be handwritten letters, others contracts.
A few old photos of Stella as a gorgeous teenage girl standing next to a distinguished but odd-looking man I assume is Maxwell.
Her description of him was entirely accurate.
He’s formidable but not exactly handsome.
His features are too big for his face, his eyebrows huge and unwieldy, but his lips are wide and sensuous, his eyes what you might refer to as smoldering if you were the kind of person who described eyes that way.
“That man certainly had something,” she says when she catches me looking at it.
“I can see it.”
“Probably because you’re an artist. You’re perceptive. You are quick to see into a person’s soul. Most artists I have known are like that. What kind of art do you make?” she asks me.
“I paint. In oils mostly,” I say. “Landscapes. Often in the style of the Impressionists and Postimpressionists. And women, always women in them. The women, um, they’re sort of in danger sometimes, or you can’t always tell what the danger is.
But the landscapes, they’re calm and idyllic…
on the surface. Lately though I have been painting women from the past in modern settings or modern women transported back to the turn of the century.
I like to think it’s a metaphor for how we all feel out of place and time, how we all grapple to make sense of a constantly changing world. ”
“You should really refine that elevator pitch. It’s unwieldy.”
“I know.”
There isn’t a market for what I do. That’s what I’m consistently told by galleries.
Pascal told me I was a genius the first time he saw my paintings and then called me derivative and cheeky only a year later.
About six months after we got together, he set up a show for me at a friend’s gallery.
The owner bought my painting for a thousand francs and I felt like the richest woman in Paris.
I don’t think Pascal was expecting it. His jealousy flared.
I didn’t understand why at the time, but Lucie was quick to explain that nothing wounds a male artist more than being forced to teach to pay the bills.
He told me what I did was worthless. I believed him.
I still believe him. None of his friends ever accepted my calls again.
“I would like to see your paintings.”
“I would need to bring you to my place. They’re difficult to transport. I paint big.”
“I would still like to see them. I must show you one more thing before we go.” She reaches over and takes the sketch away from me, carefully replacing it in its plastic slip.
I didn’t even realize I was still holding it.
“We can clean up the rest tomorrow. Do you see that panel on the wall over there? The dark wood one that looks like a hideous medicine cabinet. Open it. Here is the key.”
I wouldn’t have noticed that there was a cabinet there at all. It’s ugly and utilitarian. The keyhole is impossibly small, but the key fits easily in the lock and the panel swings open with a tired creak.
My pulse quickens.
Inside is a painting in an orange wooden frame that complements the riot of colors and thick brushstrokes that take up more than two dimensions.
The images swirl, entirely alive in front of me.
The background is an intense blue, a color found nowhere in nature.
The flowers too are somehow intensely realistic and yet also fantastical.
I feel like I could pluck out a seed and pop the salty fruit into my mouth.
I gasp slightly as I count the number of sunflowers.
The number is important. I glance behind me and see Stella’s face, now a bare canvas.
“Stella, what is this?”
She smiles at me slowly. “I think you know. And right now, we’re the only ones alive who know it exists.”