Art Critic
4
Plunged into Darkness
ANNETTE AND I were officially seniors. So were Kendra, Les, Mavis, and Susan. Dad helped Morgan set up an agency LLC with Les as a contractor—even though Les was still a year from graduation. The two of them began recruiting artists from the incoming senior class, starting with Annette, Kendra, Mavis, and me. They decided to focus their efforts on getting more of our material into the public eye. I was a painter, Annette was a writer, Kendra was a sculptor, and Mavis was a photographer.
For six weeks, Mavis and I made love every Saturday morning for two hours. That’s the only way I can describe it. When we posed with each other and sank into our silent eye-to-eye communication, we were making love. I’d never really touched her breasts, delved into her pussy, or even kissed her passionately. We would spend two hours lying on the daybed with our bodies pressed close together and look into each other’s eyes. When we were finished, we would hug for a few seconds and share a light, but not passionate, kiss.
The clay maquette that Kendra made was exquisite. Soon it would be time for her to move it to the studio at the University so she could do the plaster version from which the bronze would be cast. I loved the piece.
Over the summer, the modeling roles were reversed. Mavis pressed Les and me into service to pose with Annette, Morgan, and Kendra in various settings. She loved people and the out-of-doors. As a result, we found ourselves in a variety of costumes and settings as she captured some particularly gorgeous landscape.
By fall, we were all energized and ready for our senior year in school.
Our disciplines all required about the same class load of just twelve hours a semester, but even though the classes were titled the same, there were different specializations among them, so we only had one class during first semester together. That was ‘The Anthropology of Art’. When I say together, I mean Kendra, Mavis, and me. We were on BFA programs in Fine Art. Annette and Susan would get a BFA in Creative Writing and Literature with an emphasis on creative fiction. Annette began working on her first novel. Les had classes in both museum and gallery practices and a practicum in arts management. He had really taken to being a literary agent and it looked like that would be the major division of labor in the new agency.
My other classes were Senior Studio, which was essentially independent study to prepare for my BFA exhibition, and Professional Practices, which was to prepare me for the business side of being an artist. I was glad I had Morgan to help me with that.
It was the third week of October when I had my official meeting with my Advisor, Dr. Robinson, and the department chair, Dr. Lowenstein, about how I would structure my BFA Exhibition in the spring. That is where the final blessing would be bestowed by the university and I would be granted my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Morgan was dressed professionally for the meeting and looked like a knockout. I went back to my room and discarded my torn jeans and T-shirt. She never said anything to me about what I wore, but I didn’t want to embarrass her. I didn’t put on my suit and tie, but I found a pair of neatly pressed blue jeans in my closet that I’d never seen before. They were hanging next to a white oxford shirt and a blue herringbone jacket. Annette smiled at me when she came into the room as I was pulling on the jacket.
“That’s such a good look for you, Pen,” she said. “Nice choice.” I was pleased that I got the message without being explicitly told.
We sat at a round table and I was across from Dr. Lowenstein and between Morgan and Dr. Robinson.
“Morgan, it’s nice to see you yet again,” Dr. Lowenstein said. “Looking professional as always. Do I take it correctly that you are representing Art as well as Kendra and Mavis?”
“Yes, Dr. Lowenstein. We’re looking for other compatible artists as well,” Morgan answered.
“I hope you are not spreading yourself too thin. Representing artists takes a substantial time commitment.”
“This is my job, not my hobby,” Morgan said. Dr. Lowenstein smiled and nodded, apparently satisfied with her answer.
“Arthur, this isn’t a meeting you need to worry about,” Dr. Robinson said. “We’d like to review your portfolio and make suggestions regarding what is needed for your BFA exhibition. We always want to show our graduates in the best light.” With that we began looking through my portfolio. I had large prints of my work stretching from my admissions work to my latest pieces. Part of the review was to look at my progress as an artist.
As we worked through the portfolio, I saw Dr. Lowenstein become a little agitated, looking sideways at Dr. Robinson. I wondered if he had another appointment and was impatient to leave.
“It’s an impressive portfolio, Arthur,” Dr. Robinson said. “I knew when you came to us that you were a prolific painter. What I see here is that your technique has really improved.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Are you happy, Arthur?” Dr. Lowenstein said abruptly.
“Um… Yes.” I had a home, friends, lovers, art… It was all I’d ever wanted.
“Well, that’s something anyway,” he said. He shook his head. “Frankly, I’m a little disappointed.”
He could have punched me in the face and I’d have been less surprised. Even Dr. Robinson seemed taken aback as she looked at Dr. Lowenstein. Morgan tensed as if she were going to pounce at him.
“I… um… what…” For two years I’d been conquering my fears and inability to talk to people. I’d made friends. In five words, I was on the verge of a panic attack and could feel my throat closing.
“Dr. Lowenstein, Arthur has been getting rave reviews and has work in five different galleries now. I think calling that record disappointing is hardly fair,” Morgan snapped.
“He could be in a hundred more galleries in five years,” Dr. Lowenstein said. “Even have your own galleries in popular shopping malls. Arthur, you could become the Thomas Kinkade of draped nudes. Is that what you want?”
Talk about slapping me with an insult. Thomas Kinkade was a good artist with his own private galleries in shopping malls across America. But all his art somehow looked the same. A house or building with glowing yellow windows against a dramatic landscape that gets darker as it moves away from the light. He even has his own slogan for the art. “Paintings of Radiant Light.” He was only 56 when he died back in 2012 and his commercial success was astounding. His company estimated that one in twenty homes in America had Kinkade artwork in them. But critics were as unkind to him as Dr. Lowenstein was being to me.
I just sat there shaking my head. Morgan wrapped her arms around me as she glared at him. Now that he had said it, though, he was on a roll.
“I should have been following your progress more carefully,” he said. “I assumed you were progressing as much in your art as in your technique—which is flawless. When I looked at your admissions portfolio and then the progress you made during your freshman year, I saw hidden genius. Once you made that leap, though…” He shuffled through the portfolio to my freshman painting of Susan draped in front of my window. “Here,” he continued. “This leap to the passion and intensity of your first draped nude—you stalled. Your paintings since then have improved technically, but there has been no great movement artistically. It’s obvious that you have a strong connection to your models, but the relationship is not speaking to me.”
“What… can I do?” I whimpered.
“Arthur, I know this hurts and I’m sorry. That’s why it’s called PAINting. All I’m asking you to do is look inside and see if that genius is still hidden in there. You are going to receive your BFA. You will have a beautiful exhibition and it will continue to get rave reviews. For now. I just hoped for so much more. More that I know you are capable of.”
As I looked at him, I scowled. I wasn’t near a panic attack. This was worse. I had black thoughts. Really black. I saw Dr. Lowenstein lose his color in my eyes. Soon, he was nothing to me but a charred blackness. He stood to leave and glanced once again at Morgan holding me. “You can help him, you know,” he said to Morgan. Then he left.
Dr. Robinson tried to ameliorate the situation, offering suggestions that she thought might help. Reminding me of the progress I made when I did my repeated nipple drawings and moved from technical rendering to artistic interpretation. But even as she spoke, I could see her turning black in my eyes. She finally wished me good luck and left. Morgan and I walked back to her car.
As we crossed the campus, I watched colors dissolve into blackness. I was like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland and saw all the roses in black. The buildings turned black. I looked up and saw the sky turn black. The sun turned black. And as I followed her to the car, Morgan began to turn black as well. I couldn’t let this happen. Not my love! I snapped my eyes closed and walked right into her when she stopped at the car.
“We’ll get through it, Pen,” she said. “I’m going to fight this.” I just shook my head and climbed in the car, keeping my eyes closely shut.
“Dad, you have to go talk to him. He was mean and spiteful,” Morgan said at dinner. I hadn’t said anything. I hadn’t looked at anyone. I couldn’t. I didn’t like what I saw. I looked at my black potato and my black peas and my black meatloaf. Everything was black.
“I’m not sure you are being just in your assessment,” Dad said. “He didn’t attack Arthur. He didn’t try to force him into a response or to speak up. He didn’t ridicule him. His criticism was limited to the artwork and his expectations.”
“But he was mean. He made Art feel bad. Can’t you see?”
“The role of a professor is to evaluate the student’s work. He did that. Ask Annette what I said about her manuscript,” Dad said.
“You mean about it being predictable, juvenile, and poorly edited?” Annette said. I realized for the first time that my lover wasn’t having an easy time of it either. How could my own father say things like that?
“That’s terrible,” my sister pounced again. “But Annette can take that kind of criticism. Arthur can’t.”
“Why do you think I can take it?” Annette yelled. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I thought it was my best work. Arthur isn’t the only one in the family with feelings!”
“It isn’t about feelings,” Mom joined in. “It’s about how you respond to criticism and what you are going to do about it. Annette, what do you intend to do with your manuscript?”
“Rewrite it! I’ll show him!” Annette stood and dumped the rest of her food in the garbage and put her dish in the dishwasher.
“And what are you going to do, Arthur?” she asked. I followed Annette to the garbage and dishwasher.
“Paint,” I whispered.
Annette and I headed for the kitchen door. I could only bear to look at her blackened feet as I followed her. We paused when Mom said, “Morgan?” Morgan was crying. I knew she felt this as deeply as I did. When something affected me, it affected her twice as much. And now it affected Annette, too. Morgan dumped her food and followed us to the door.
“I’m going to support my lovers and sell the fuck out of their work.”
We all left the room and went upstairs. We’d be hungry and regret dumping our dinner later. Right now, none of us could eat.
We were a miserable bunch. I couldn’t bear to look at anyone. Black. But my Lady and le Fay needed me. I had to shut off my despair… my panic… because they needed me.
I didn’t trust my voice. There were no words. I gathered Annette into my arms and held her as she sobbed against my chest.
“I failed,” Morgan said. “I failed you both. If I’m supposed to be your representative, then I should guide you toward success. I took you both into failure.” I reached toward my sister and pulled her into the hug with Annette and me.
“We didn’t fail!” Annette almost screamed. “We were criticized. You didn’t fail. You represented exactly what we gave you. And none of us are going to fail. We’re going to paint, write, and rep. And kick their fucking asses.”
“K-Kendra?” I asked Morgan. Kendra’s presentation had been the day before, but I had been so busy preparing my portfolio that I hadn’t asked how it had gone. Morgan sighed.
“She’s the darling of the sculpture department right now. They are gaga over fusion concept for bronze and glass in the same sculpture. She showed several small pieces she’d been working on. Then she presented the plaster model for the big piece with you and Mavis. Do you know it’s going to be cut into about fifty or a hundred pieces to cast it and she’ll have to weld it together like a 3-D puzzle? They want her to cast two immediately so there’s both a plain bronze without the fancy patinas she’s planning or the glass auras.”
“What about Mavis?” Annette asked.
“Her presentation is tomorrow. We’ll know then,” Morgan said. “Pen, you know you’ll have to pose with her again when Kendra is ready to do the glass, right? Will you be able to do it?” I was flooded with hope and nodded.
The last time I’d posed with Mavis for Kendra’s sculpture had been a three-hour session and by the end of it we were both crying. It was like saying goodbye to a lover or breaking up. When we were finished posing, I lay down beside her and just held her in my arms for half an hour. I just couldn’t bear to let her go.
If we had to hold that pose again, we would end up making love. Right there on the daybed in the studio.
Morgan, Annette, and I each showered separately and went to bed. I kept my eyes closed, even as they came to bed and lay their heads against my shoulders. We didn’t say anything else. Morgan and Annette reached across me to hold each other and that was how we fell asleep. My eyes were still closed. Everything behind my eyelids was black.
I didn’t want to open my eyes in the morning. I didn’t want to see the black world. The colors had all begun to fade after my meeting with Dr. Lowenstein. I walked across campus to the car with Morgan and watched the grass turn dirty brown and then fade to black, like someone had cut it out of the picture and showed a void behind it. Buildings went black. The sky turned black. And gradually the color escaped from the other students I met along the way. They were black. I don’t mean racially black. They were black like someone had dumped charcoal dust over them. Or perhaps they had been burnt up by their own colors. They were black shapes against a black background in a black world.
I didn’t want to open my eyes and see that Morgan and Annette had also turned black. I couldn’t stand it. But even my memories were turning black.
I also couldn’t understand it. I know color theory and light properties. If everything is black then no light is reflected. Yet I could see every minute detail of what was around me. It had no color difference, but I could still see the shapes. I could see the buildings, the sky, the bird in the sky, but they were all the same absence-of-color black. How could I ever paint again if all I could see was black?
My mind was turning black as well.
I’ve heard people talk about living in a black and white world. I’d lost one more dimension. I lived in a black and black world. There were no fifty shades of gray between them.
I didn’t need color, I decided. Color was warmth and light. My world was cold and bleak.
When Morgan and Annette stirred in the morning, I refused to get up.
“Honey, aren’t you going to class today?” Morgan asked.
“No.”
“Are you going to paint?” Annette said petting my back as I lay with my face in the pillow.
“No.”
“Come down to have breakfast with us.”
“No.”
“Aren’t you going to get up?”
“No.”
From then on, I just quit talking. They had their lives to live. I didn’t. I shut out everything. How could I tell them? I didn’t have any more words. They’d all dried up and turned black as well. Everything faded to black. Soon, I wouldn’t need food or water or love or companionship. I wouldn’t need anything in my black world but more black.
I heard Annette leave to go to class. Good. I didn’t want to see her black. Morgan stayed at her desk in the studio for as long as possible, but she had to join Mavis for her photography review. Good. I didn’t want to see her black, either.
When she left, I allowed myself to open my eyes for the first time on my black world. I used the toilet and showered. I looked around my room. It was all black. My easel and the painting on it were black. The daybed was black. Annette’s reading corner and Morgan’s computer were black.
Flowing black lines into black backgrounds and black foregrounds. I couldn’t stand to look at it. I went back to bed.
Sometime after noon, Mom brought a tray of food into my room. I heard her stop to stare at me, but she didn’t say anything. When Morgan and Annette got back later, they took the untouched tray back downstairs. I turned my face away from them when they came into the room and refused to look at them or say anything. Later, as they got ready for bed, I slipped away to the daybed in the studio to sleep.
It was the first time we hadn’t slept together in nearly four years.
I heard Annette and Morgan crying in our bedroom, but I couldn’t face them. Somewhere in the black of my memories, I still held the idea of how vivid and vibrant they had always been. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing them as a charred ruin, like the rest of my world.
When the other beings who lived in the house left for the day, I got up to take a shower. When I went back to my room, I found the blindfold we’d used when I painted Susan in the online chatroom. I gathered my sketchbook and pencils and went back to bed in the studio. I tied the blindfold tightly around my eyes. Now I didn’t need to be afraid that I would open them and see the blackened world around me. I would simply draw what was behind my eyes.
Normally, when I close my eyes—even at night with the lights out—I see flashes of color, streaks of brightness, and even sometimes entire scenes on the back of my eyelids. Dreamscapes, I called them. But nothing was normal anymore. Blindfolded, I saw those streaks and flashes but they were all black against a black background. I couldn’t claim to be blind. I could still see perfectly well, but everything I saw was black. I tapped my pencil on paper. Then again as there was another dark flash across my retina. Like one of those eye vision tests, I tapped each time I saw one.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
I liked the sound. It echoed the flashes in my brain.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
It took on a cadence of its own, not always following the dark flashes, but harmonizing with them.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Pen? You’ve filled your whole page with black dots. Honey, are you okay?”
What a strange question for the other being to ask. How could I be okay? I was never going to be okay.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Let me turn the page for you, sweetheart.”
I clutched my pad to my chest and turned to face the wall. When I decided they were gone, I tapped with my pencil. It was so peaceful. I could lose myself in the quiet tapping of my pencil against the paper.
Night came, I supposed. I could hear night sounds. Whimpering. I wasn’t sure if it was someone else or me. When I awoke, I retreated to my sketchbook and pencil.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
In my mind, I was creating beautiful paintings of lovers and friends. On the paper, there were only graphite dots and smudges. Even when I removed the blindfold, I couldn’t see them. They had no dimension. Nothing to make the black dots stand out against the black page. I put the blindfold on again so I didn’t have to look at it.
Night sounds. Sleeping. Others. Not me. I didn’t need sleep. Whimpering. I wish it would stop. Each black dot cried.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
A woman sat on either side of me on the daybed I’d made my home. They hugged me, but I just kept tapping the paper with my pencil. I’d filled an entire sketchbook in the past week. I hadn’t eaten anything. I didn’t need food any more than I needed sleep. I could feel the tapping get weaker and struggled to get up long enough to use the bathroom.
“It’s the darkness,” Mom said. “It’s hereditary.” My mom? She never came into the studio. Never interrupted me while I was working. I thought it was the others. What was my mom doing in here? Couldn’t she see I was working.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“But you can get through it when you decide to,” Gramma said. What was she doing here? Gramma couldn’t climb the stairs very well. Her arthritis was too bad. “It didn’t hit your great-uncle John until he was thirty. I thought I’d lost him. It wasn’t easy, but he came through the darkness. It always hits the men hardest.”
Men. I’m a man. I’ve been hit hardest.
“We need you to eat now,” Mom said. “It will give you strength. Have a sip of this.” I was going to shake my head, but when I turned my face the smell of the broth was so intense that I reflexively put my lips on the rim. The flavor burst into a thousand colors of black on my tongue. I greedily gulped it down.
“The darkness is what comes when we lose the aura sense,” Gramma said. How could I lose what I’d never had? That was silly. “For women in the family, the aura sense is often so overwhelming that we can’t see anything else. I think that is because it is onset at puberty in most instances. Morgan sees both worlds simultaneously. It seems that she was born with the sense open already. It’s different with the men. The aura sense in the men is so fully integrated that they don’t even realize they have it. Until the darkness takes it away.”
“But it passes,” Mom said. “It might take a long time, but it passes and the aura sense returns stronger than ever. Don’t lose hope, Arthur.”
“Your lovers need you, Grandson. Morgan might sink into a period of darkness as well. Annette is constantly angry. They fight. Without you, they don’t have balance.”
“Come to dinner now, Arthur. Gramma needs you to help her down the stairs. It took her a long time to climb up to see you.”
I stood and laid my sketchbook and pencil on the bed and took Gramma’s arm. I don’t know which of us supported the other. I didn’t realize until we were downstairs that I’d never taken off the blindfold. I didn’t need to. I knew exactly where everything was and where I was going. And this way, I didn’t have to look at them. I didn’t have to see the black.
Annette and Morgan needed me.
Hah!
What do they know about need?
I was alone in my head. My art was gone. I’d spent days making dots on paper with a pencil worn down to a stub. I was so empty that I needed to need. I was hollow and alone.
I’d taken off my blindfold to shower but put it over my closed eyes as soon as I was dry.
“Honey, we’re your wives. Please, come to bed with us. I miss you so much!” Morgan pled. I crawled onto the bed, not needing eyes to see them roll away from each other so I could get between them. They both kissed me on the cheek, not trying to force any closer intimacy. They didn’t say anything else. I lay awake after they slept, trying to force my fingers to not tap against their skin.
I dressed early and caught a ride to school with Dad. I hadn’t slept much. I didn’t think Annette and Morgan did, either. They’d rolled away from me in the night—probably because my fingers kept tapping when I relaxed my control. My Anthropology of Art class was at eight o’clock and I’d often hitched a ride with Dad. Annette didn’t have a class until ten. Morgan still worked in the gallery, but was often on the phone in the studio trying to place stories, artwork, and photos. She took being an agent seriously.
“Are you going to wear that all day?” Dad asked. I shrugged. I didn’t seem to have any trouble getting around with the blindfold on and it kept me from looking at things. At people. I hated the blackness. Dad sighed. I suppose it was ridiculous to walk around with a blindfold on. I suppose I could always tell people it was an experiment to help with my art. But that would be a lie and would require that I speak. I didn’t have any words I could say.
I pulled the blindfold off but kept my eyes closed.
Dad nudged me and I felt him put a pair of glasses in my hand. I cracked an eye open to see a pair of sunglasses. It struck me as funny. My dad was giving me sunglasses to protect my eyes from the dark. I put them on. It worked, at least a little.
“They are the most opaque lenses I could get,” Dad said. “Used to be the ones I got for Mom. Even if they don’t help with your vision, they will conceal the fact that your eyes are closed.” I nodded. Dad parked and I went to class.
“Cool shades, dude,” Les said when we met for lunch at eleven-thirty. I just nodded.
“We’ve been worried about you, Arthur,” Kendra said. I let her hug me but didn’t respond. She let up. I kept my eyes closed. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. My eyes hurt. They could tell that wasn’t the only thing that hurt.
Annette joined us about ten minutes later and gave me a kiss on the cheek before she got her lunch.
“That was pretty lightweight,” Susan said. She’d apparently come in with Annette. I suppose they had the same ten o’clock class. “Should I be standing by to pick up the pieces? I’m available, you know, Art. Or maybe I should stand by for Annette.”
“Susan, that’s pretty crass, even for you,” Kendra snapped.
“Can’t help it. Since Zen and I broke up, I’ve been in a constant state of horny. I haven’t had a come like Art gave me in two years. I want to pose for you again, Art. When can you fit me in? Or fit in me?”
Susan’s banter wasn’t that unusual. She’d tried camming for a short while at Zen’s encouragement, but hated it. I liked her because she talked exactly the way I’d talk to people if I could get the damn words out of my mouth. Biting. Maybe bitter. It created a lot of friction between her and Zen, though, and when Susan made some nasty comments about camming, it escalated to the point that they broke up. That was a lesson I should learn. I guess I was lucky I couldn’t get the words out.
“If you can get anything out of him, you’re welcome to try,” Annette said harshly. “God knows, nothing I do helps.” There was no humor in her voice.
I could feel tears on my cheeks, but I couldn’t feel what caused them.
“Conceptually interesting, but I don’t think the medium is working for you,” Dr. Lowenstein said. I was in the fine art studio on campus waiting for my ride home on Friday. It wasn’t unusual for Dr. Lowenstein to stroll through looking at students’ work. I knew he’d followed me over from my Professional Practices class with him.
I’d been in the studio each day, mostly just tapping with my pencil on paper. For some reason, today, I’d grabbed a sheet of black pastel paper and a stick of charcoal. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to draw, but the scene in my head was all black on black. I began working it the same way I usually worked charcoal, sketching and shading and smudging into the shadows and away from the highlights. I could see the work perfectly fine, though I never removed my sunglasses. Scarcely opened my eyes.
“I’m sorry for having been so harsh with you during our meeting,” Dr. Lowenstein said. “I know you have great things inside you. I just want to see you pull them out. This that you are working on has real potential. You might try it in oil. Let it loose, Arthur. Open up and let everything you have bottled up inside out onto the canvas.”
“Sorry,” I croaked. My first word. Typical. I was always sorry for something. To someone.
“Arthur, you have nothing to apologize to me for. Never apologize to me. And never ever forgive me.”
Annette didn’t come to the studio to collect me to go home. I was only vaguely aware of the time, but I was finished with my drawing. I walked out to the parking lot and found her already in her car waiting. She was crying. I didn’t know what to do. It made me anxious and tears leaked out of my eyes as she drove us home. My heartrate was up and it was hard to get air in my lungs.
Panic.
I didn’t know what to do. We needed to get to Morgan. She would take care of Annette. She would know what to do. Annette didn’t pull into the driveway.
“Arthur,” she sobbed, “I’m not coming in. I’m going to my parents’ house. I can’t do it. I’ve tried so hard. Morgan and I fight all the time. You… It’s like you aren’t there. We’ve always… I love you so much. You’re what made it possible for Morgan and me to be together. We love each other, but we need you. I can’t come in and continue to be angry and hurt all the time. It’s poisoning everything we have. If I’m not there, maybe you and Morgan can heal. Then maybe I can, too. I love you, Pen. I love you!”
She threw herself across the console and sobbed against my chest.
I tried. I tried to say the words. I couldn’t find them. They were stuck someplace in the blackness. I was paralyzed by anxiety and fear. I was going to pass out. Hyperventilating.
“You should go in,” Annette said, pushing away from me. “I just need to be alone for the weekend. It will be fine.” Her words were drained of emotion. I knew.
It wouldn’t be fine.
Morgan moved to the guest room downstairs leaving me alone in the suite that we’d built for the three of us when I was still in high school. She blamed me. I was sucking her into the blackness, too.
She could have stayed in our bedroom. I didn’t need it. I didn’t sleep.
My first canvas was only nine-by-twelve. I painted black foreground on black background, black figures in a black world. I didn’t use different ‘colors’ of black. Everything came from the same tube of paint. I just placed layer after layer on the canvas, painting up and texturing the surface. I worked all night Friday and most of the day on Saturday before I ran out of the house to get supplies at the art store before it closed. I needed canvas boards and paint. Ivory black oil paint in 32-ounce cans. While I was there, I found other tools to paint with. Palette knives, brushes with different bristle stiffness. I even bought a set of sculpture tools like Kendra used for working in clay. And a set of pottery tools. On the way out of the store, I kicked a rough stone and stopped to pick it up.
I returned to my studio and placed a bigger canvas board on my easel. I painted Susan’s sensual pose, wrapped in drapery as she stood by the window. The pose Dr. Lowenstein said had been my last breakthrough. The window was black. The drapes were black. Susan was black. But my vision was clear. She was no longer charred black burnt flesh, but the brilliant ivory black of oil paint.
“He’s painting,” I heard my father whisper. “But it’s all black.”
“His vision is dark,” Mom said. “Arthur, you’ll need your strength. Eat. You don’t need to come downstairs. The food is on the desk here. We’ll leave you alone, but you must eat.”
As they left, I heard my father’s worried whisper. “But it’s all black. There’s nothing there.”
I’d completed my second canvas by the end of the weekend. The first, a small study of flowers, just to test the canvas. People don’t realize that flowers are like drapery. Look at Georgia O’Keefe. Her flowers look like folded and wrinkled bits of fabric. Then, I’d done the larger painting of Susan. Something woke in me and I reflexively tried sniffing my fingers as I painted. Of course, all I could smell was oil paint.
“It’s time to leave, Arthur,” Dad said. He’d given me enough warning that he would be ready to go that I could prepare my brushes for rest until I got home. I simply walked out to the car and rode in silence to the university for my first class. In Anthropology of Art, I opened my sketchbook and kept notes as I had done in every class since I started school here. But this time, I covered the entire page. I used a black oil pastel pencil. I could clearly see the subjects and simply drew my notes.
I skipped lunch and went directly to the fine art studio. The black pastel worked well and I drew on black sanded pastel paper. Depth. Texture. Continuity. The fragmentation of the mind. It was all clear to me in crisp black and black.
When I was finished with the work, I was eager to return to my studio at home to paint some more. But I didn’t know how I was getting home. I guessed I would just stay in the studio. The black pastel painting I’d just created was still on my easel when I stood to put my supplies away. I would need more oil pastel pencils and sticks.
I saw a movement to my left as Annette turned away from the picture. She was here? In the studio? Then she turned suddenly toward my easel and stalked it. I was still afraid to look at her, fearful of what I would see. I wanted the vivid colors of her hair, her skin, her eyes, her nipples. I didn’t want to see her charred black. I wanted desperately to remember her as my love. I didn’t dare touch the memories, though, for fear they would also be charred.
I turned away while Annette continued her unusual approach to viewing art, stalking it, pouncing on it, ignoring it. She was a cat considering art like it was a spider on the wall.
“Let’s go home,” she said as she put her arm through mine. Her voice was soft as her hand and we walked in silence the rest of the way.
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