Classicist
By Noo
- 839 reads
Impressionist
That was the thing about his nan’s paintings, Kieron thought. They were so literal. See a house, paint a house. See a flower, paint a flower.
They were fine and all that, and to be fair Kieron was pleased to see her doing them; but they weren’t what you’d call art.
Whenever he popped round, she’d be at the table by the back window, small canvases spread out on copies of the local newspaper, little jewels of oil paint in the indents of egg boxes. She always painted with her tongue out – sharp at the side of her mouth, eyes narrowed as she focused on what she was reproducing.
Because that was the thing – she only painted from photos she’d taken of various places at some past time. There were hills and trees, city streets in winter, country-green lanes. It seemed odd to Kieron that she would want to paint an image she’d already captured; but as he grew up a bit, the more he came to realise you never really know why another person does anything ever.
Take his mom, for example. She never visited his nan, never checked on how she was doing. Never stopped him going to see her, granted. But when he’d asked her once about why she had nothing to do with her, she would only say, “Leave it, Kieron. Some things are just best left unsaid and that’s that.”
Another thing that was odd about the paintings was the addition she made to every single one of them. Whatever scene it was, somewhere or another was a tiny image of his grandad. Kieron wasn’t sure it was him at first as the figures were so small that they rendered any facial feature unrecognisable. And to be honest, he hadn’t really known his grandad very well anyway.
He remembered an impression of him – a big man (but when you’re four, that’s not much of a distinguisher), red, crinkled face. A smell of tobacco, soap and outdoors. Always on his way out of the house. Kieron also remembered their oft–repeated exchange, “Where you going, Grandad?” And his grandad’s response, “To see a man about dog.”
Thirteen years later, his grandad’s answer still created pictures in Kieron’s head. A man in the playground of the park, sitting on the roundabout and smiling. A small, white dog at his feet on a long lead. His grandad collecting it as a present for Kieron – one that in reality, never arrived.
Round his neck, Kieron recalled his grandad always wore a red neckerchief and it was this he’d noticed in the paintings that had prompted him to ask his nan whether it was him. She’d not answered straight away, but she’d put her brush down and looked at Kieron. “Yes. It’s your grandad, bless him.” He’d not liked how sad she’d looked as she spoke.
The tiny pictures of his grandad sitting on his nan’s benches or standing under her blossoming trees, comforted Kieron though. He liked the idea of him still kind of being there. Looking down on him from his nan’s walls. Safe in the house with its fug of old coal fires, bleach and paint thinner.
Later, Kieron is moving through the city centre. Tear-arse running, out-facing the cold air. Past the chrome snake of the station’s exterior and the tired, zombie people. Prince is in his head and he’s singing like an angel. Kieron’s spray paint matches Prince’s purple vibe and this coincidence makes Kieron smile.
At the exact point he jumps down the ramp so he’s next to the standing train, Prince sings, “I never wanted to be your weekend lover, I only wanted to be some kind of friend.” Kieron takes his can and spews out the vivid-lilac paint. He adds his tags to the train’s rusting metal. The tags run a little, but this only adds to their beauty. Rust and purple, the tags modern hieroglyphics.
On other platforms, the sounds of the trains coming and going echo and fill the air with noise, then absence. Everything is movement. The potential for other places to go. An impression of freedom.
*
Classicist
Whenever Rita painted, it was Theo that she actually saw. Not the street she grew up on, reproduced again in slick oil paint from its origin of a black and white photograph. Not the glory of a past seaside, faded photo blue sea, restored to a shiny turquoise on her canvas.
No, it was Theo. Tiny, a few brush strokes only, but still present in every scene she recreated. God, but it had been difficult living with him and she’d known this better than anyone else. The inconsistency of the man, the highs and lows. The comings and goings. Mainly the goings in fact… Off for days with no sense of where he’d gone; and when, or indeed if he’d return.
If she thought about the days and nights she’d been left alone with Jeanie as a tiny baby (Theo, only the devil knew where), the fear she felt then still had the power to hit her like a physical punch in the chest. She’d sung to Jeanie – long, made up lullabies – to fill the silence of the house, the noise in her mind. When Theo would come walking back through the door, as he always did, he’d have a rueful smile on his face and Rita would want to wipe it off with the back of her hand. But not as much as she’d wanted to kiss him and thank him for returning to her.
Jeanie had grown up in her image – scared and accepting of her father’s disappearances. Less and less tolerant of her mom’s reaction to them. Feeling, with the logic children bring to their parents’ relationship, that if Rita was less both angry and grateful on his return, he wouldn’t want to go in the first place.
When Theo died, Rita and Jeanie could only believe he’d come back like all the other times. Yes, they’d seen with their own eyes the old man he’d become fade away in a hospital bed; but he’d returned too often before to believe that death could be any more final. That was what he did when he disappeared – he came back. It was only weeks later, after the funeral, that both acknowledged the ridiculous hope they’d been holding on to. They didn’t share their sadness though – if anything, it only confirmed the distance that had grown between them.
The women came out of the woodwork (like images revealing themselves from the strokes of a paintbrush) over a number of years. Little notes put through Rita’s letterbox, reminiscing about stolen hours with Theo on long ago summer evenings. Sad, sometimes bitter memories of a lovable, shiftless man. Rita was neither surprised by the various revelations, nor particularly interested in engaging with them. The past was as it was – unchangeable and remote.
Later, Rita is working on her latest painting. It’s of a wood walk she used to take Kieron on when he was little. Jeanie would drop him off and see him through the door, never coming in herself, and Rita and Kieron would walk to the edge of the park and into the woods. The photo she’s painting is of the main path through the trees and it’s teaming with bluebells on either side of it. Kieron has his head turned back towards her as he races ahead into the misty, blue distance.
And is her painting truth? Rita’s not really sure. All she knows is that in her version, Theo is standing under a tree to the right of the path, upright and tall in his red neckerchief. He looks like he’s waiting for Kieron, but Rita isn’t really concerned about why he’s there. The thing that’s important to her is that he is there. To talk to, to swear at, to be bigger than. Pinned down and safe in her paintings.
*
Outsider artist
No one really knows that Theo’s an artist. Why would they? He’s never told them, he’s had no need to.
Jobs have come and gone, family life has given him security and purpose/something to run away from – depending on your perspective. But Theo has continued to paint, despite the circumstances of any particular time.
Theo creates worlds on bottle tops. Minute, only visible with a magnifying glass. Luminous, perfect worlds as long as you have the patience to look for them.
He’s never shown Rita what he does – she hasn’t got an artistic bone in her body and Theo worries she’d just laugh at him. He has shared some of his worlds with his lovers. Usually in the aftermath of sex, when the air is fuzzy and tranquil. He’s taken one of the bottle tops out of the small, wooden box he keeps them in and held them up to the light, asking them to hold the magnifying glass so they can see. Each time, the reaction is the same – a frown and a, “I don’t know what I’m looking at”. Then a, “Oh. Oh, that’s so beautiful.”
There’s something of the religious ritual about showing his lovers his bottle top worlds. A sense of revelation, of seeking and ultimately finding a truth. And it’s this, not the sex, nor the space, or the time away that he can’t share with Rita.
It’s a walk by the cliffs in the ozone of a windy morning. Down a twisting path to the restless, crashing sea. It’s worlds opening out, expanding further, then contracting. It’s outrunning illness or death or the devil. How could Rita ever hope to understand this? How could she understand him?
But Theo wasn’t born yesterday and he knows in the end Rita will catch up with him and his roaming days will be over. He knows she loves him and he guesses he loves her. But Rita will do what Theo reckons love always makes people do. She will pin him down and trap him. Raw, hidden artist that he is – trapped by the love of his wife.
*
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Comments
yeh, art creates the creator
yeh, art creates the creator a distance and a nearness. I guess we never really know someone sounds somewhere near the truth.
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These are
deft and intriguing. A bit like piano exercises or rather, a work like Das Wohltemperte Klavier. There you go, compared to something by J.S.Bach. I can think of no finer compliment.
'"All true artists are outsiders", Discuss.'
Art Module A101 arts foundation course OU 1984
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Beautifully put together and
Beautifully put together and so moving - art in fact.
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