Fiction & Photos
The Ghost in the Room
Let me tell you a secret. Come here. Quickly now. Imagine it's just the two of us alone in a darkened theater, or a Gothic church at twilight; you with your silvery shawl wrapped around your shoulders, pulled tightly, the fringe just brushing the hairs on your arms, now covered in tiny goosebumps. Your feet bare.
And me with the easel, watching you with my paintbrush, sitting in front of the rows of chairs, or pews, because I am, in fact, the one who is on display for you. You watch me as I slowly work the powdered pigment with the palette knife, until the granules of ultramarine blue, of raw umber, of phthalocyanine green are suspended evenly in small pools of linseed oil. There is a smudge of charcoal on my cheek from the underdrawing.
The underdrawing, which is both you and not-you. Simple arcs of black on the white gesso describe curves, angles, draperies. The arch of your nose. The sweep of your hair loose on your shoulders. The implied violence in the tense crookedness of your elbows and knees.
On the skeleton of the underdrawing I carefully paint a layer the green-blue of your veins, feeling like a surgeon, or a god. It has been hours. It is the next night. The moon is slightly fuller, the light hitting your cheekbones and glittering in your eyes. The greenish layer is dry and I begin to layer fat over lean, tempering my paint with thick medium and a gloss of titanium white for the pearl-sheen of your skin. The room is heady with the warm smell of linseed oil, the cloying thickness of Damar varnish, the faint sweet reek of turpentine. My head swims. When I stop for a cigarette, you lean back slightly in the chair, your eyes closing.
The painting is finished and strangers fill the outer gallery, just outside the room where we sat, alone, in the twilight and the silence; now, the air is filled with the tinkling of artificial laughter and half-empty wine glasses. There is a red dot next to the painting. Somebody has purchased it. It will hang in a living-room above somebody's matching silvery couch where, perhaps, they fight or fuck or watch television. You will be like a ghost in their house.
Just like you are a ghost in my life because I have not seen you for five years now.
***
A week late...Is this sentimental? I can't really tell. It was too much fun to write. Inspired by Should I Stay Or Should I Go by Flickr user ilgattoelavolpe. Anyone seen the movie about Camille Claudel starring Isabelle Adjani?
God, I really want to paint now. Our studio's still under construction, though...somewhere under all the piles of stuff is a gessoed canvas waiting for me. And my box of paint. No powdered pigment, though. And definitely nothing resembling Damar varnish.
And me with the easel, watching you with my paintbrush, sitting in front of the rows of chairs, or pews, because I am, in fact, the one who is on display for you. You watch me as I slowly work the powdered pigment with the palette knife, until the granules of ultramarine blue, of raw umber, of phthalocyanine green are suspended evenly in small pools of linseed oil. There is a smudge of charcoal on my cheek from the underdrawing.
The underdrawing, which is both you and not-you. Simple arcs of black on the white gesso describe curves, angles, draperies. The arch of your nose. The sweep of your hair loose on your shoulders. The implied violence in the tense crookedness of your elbows and knees.
On the skeleton of the underdrawing I carefully paint a layer the green-blue of your veins, feeling like a surgeon, or a god. It has been hours. It is the next night. The moon is slightly fuller, the light hitting your cheekbones and glittering in your eyes. The greenish layer is dry and I begin to layer fat over lean, tempering my paint with thick medium and a gloss of titanium white for the pearl-sheen of your skin. The room is heady with the warm smell of linseed oil, the cloying thickness of Damar varnish, the faint sweet reek of turpentine. My head swims. When I stop for a cigarette, you lean back slightly in the chair, your eyes closing.
The painting is finished and strangers fill the outer gallery, just outside the room where we sat, alone, in the twilight and the silence; now, the air is filled with the tinkling of artificial laughter and half-empty wine glasses. There is a red dot next to the painting. Somebody has purchased it. It will hang in a living-room above somebody's matching silvery couch where, perhaps, they fight or fuck or watch television. You will be like a ghost in their house.
Just like you are a ghost in my life because I have not seen you for five years now.
***
A week late...Is this sentimental? I can't really tell. It was too much fun to write. Inspired by Should I Stay Or Should I Go by Flickr user ilgattoelavolpe. Anyone seen the movie about Camille Claudel starring Isabelle Adjani?
God, I really want to paint now. Our studio's still under construction, though...somewhere under all the piles of stuff is a gessoed canvas waiting for me. And my box of paint. No powdered pigment, though. And definitely nothing resembling Damar varnish.
Comment
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Comment by Donal Murphy on September 23, 2007 at 10:12am
- Yes, I loved the descriptions in this, so detailed, meticulous and passionate. Inspiring!
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Comment by TadMack on September 22, 2007 at 10:00am
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Some awesome descriptions. Do any of your paintings hang in your house? I'd love to have something that I am dying to do like that, can detail and describe in layers and steps. There's yet too much noise in my head for that, but I think it's great that the construction isn't totally throwing you off.
And of course it's sentimental! But it all falls together...
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