Artist
There’s two weeks to go until I’m done for the year, and with two weeks to go I’m told I need one more work for the final. It’s after a tutorial, and I’m off to the café for the strongest black coffee they have and to nurse a mild but persistent hangover, when one of the lecturers (Gary – contemporary art, younger than the other lecturers - usually my favourite) pulls me aside and says sorry – we need one last work from you for the finals – if we don’t have the right number it’s an automatic fail, and I’m like bloody fuck how can happen? and he’s says admin error – you know what they’re like and he’s all shoot the eyebrows up you know how it is, if it were up to me I wouldn’t bother, bureaucracy eh? look, like we’re on the same side in the endless struggle against some faceless Soviet department, and then he touches my arm to show me how much he cares, my brain flips and I want to cry or kill.
I turn away so I don’t have to look at him, and then he drops it: oh yeah - one more thing. Maybe you want to … try something a little different this time. And something in my head goes Bang. What do you mean? I almost don’t screech, and he’s all palms out in front of him and well, maybe it’s time to try something … new; something away from your usual style and Jo, who I didn’t even realise was waiting for me around the corner comes back, picks up my bag and drags me away before I can think of anything to reply, muttering something under her breath, and maybe that’s a good thing because my mind is clouded over like a field in a pre-dawn light, except for a mental image of the penknife in my bag.
And later that night my boyfriend agrees with him, and he should know better by now. We’re onto a second bottle of red by this stage, plates congealing on the floor in front of us, and sitting on the blanket over the crap lounge that came with the flat, with the TV on and the sound down and a CD on. One of his, as usual. All I’m saying is maybe he has a point he says to the home decoration show on the TV, the smiling face of the presenter looking like she thinks every word he utters is gospel truth, all that naked women thing – it’s a bit depressing, isn’t it? Especially the way they all stare out at you like that, with those baleful eyes and all. And I feel every part of me inflate as he blunders on with you know, I could even get the bank to buy a few canvases – Maurice was saying how he’d like some art around the place to impress the clients. They like all that, apparently – makes them think we’re interested in more than just money. We could tell them we’re supporting and up and coming artist – they’d love it. But we wouldn’t want to scare them off, eh? and he does that smile that he thinks I love so much, and all I can smell is ammonia and sweat.
And before I even realise it I’m slamming the door and storming down the stairs, chased by his bloody smirk, and I’m across the road and down those dark hedge fringed laneways, getting smaller one after another, until it’s over the wall and into the cemetery next to the old church where that insane bell ringer goes to fuck with my Sunday mornings, and I’m climbing up the old yew tree to my usual branch, the big forked one where I can dangle and smoke and think. And I light the joint that I had in my pocket as the sky, pregnant with clouds, clears for long enough for me to see the over bright, almond shaped moon. And I sit there, trying not to think about what he said, concentrating on breathing in and out, and I start to think about how my mum used to hate it when I climbed the big willow tree out in the back yard, fretting about driving me to the hospital if I fell out, even though I never gave her any reason to worry. Well, not about that, anyway. She told me this so often that I used to fantasize about it, dreaming of the urgent drive from our little village, past the green across from the pub where I had my first kiss behind the wall out the back, down the road and past the supermarket and into town, the world rushing past like a storm driven ocean of green and grey. I’ve always liked to climb trees – I have the best ideas there, see the best paintings I’ll never paint – even though I know I’ll never remember more than flashes of the images I saw there when I return to earth. Just like my dreams.
I walk home with my head awash with images, and the air tastes sweet, like peaches. Up the stairs and I’m home, and he’s still on the lounge, watching that late night news discussion programme he likes, and he’s about to speak but I straddle him and stick my tongue down his throat and stop him. And then he moves to get the remote and put a CD on, but I don’t let him, and a politician drones on and on about healthcare reform or something as I grind up against him, and then his shirt is unbuttoned and his pants are down and I’m doing what I love to do. And later in bed he’s lying there asleep with his arm around me, his hand cupping my breast, until my leg starts to cramp and I undress myself of him and get up and go back to the lounge room. I light up and look at that big blank canvas in the corner because I can’t sleep. Sometimes insomnia just means more time to paint.
And the next morning he’s already gone and the canvas is prepared, and I can’t remember doing it, but it’s one less job to do. And it feels too early to be alive. And I wake up and I don’t know where I am, and then I realise that I’m on a train and my head is on a woman’s shoulder and it’s too early and my bag is on the ground between my legs. And I’m saying sorry and she says don’t worry dear, I didn’t have the heart to wake you – you looked so tired and she smiles, and I check to see if I drooled on her in my sleep. And I’m thinking of my painting, of what she’ll become, and I’m thinking of the Degas exhibition at the National, and I don’t realise it’s my stop until it’s too late, the doors are closing, bugger fuck, so I have to swap at the next stop and go back one and walk to Uni. And I go for a coffee in the café and ask around to see where everyone is up to with their final pieces, and Jamie is strolling around, bragging about being finished for the year, and I feel like stabbing him with a pencil. And I can’t shake the feeling even though he’s my mate and my drinking buddy when we play pool in the pub across the road on Thursday nights after late tutorial.
And I like Jamie, really I do, but he can be a bit of a pain in the arse sometimes. Like last week, after a few too many beers, when we got into a discussion about our art and what we wanted to do with it. He paints in that rough, would be if it could be graffiti style that is so popular on club flyers, by the way. He buys into the whole starving artist cliche, and wants to move to Budapest when we’re finished to concentrate on his art completely – he might get a job in a pub or something, but wants to churn out his art and sell it on and live off that. I can’t understand that philosophy at all – I’ll probably get a job of some sort and work on my art when I want – it will be art for its own sake, rather than what sells, and if someone likes it and wants to buy it then that’s great, but otherwise I do it for me and whoever I show it to. He just laughed at me and told me I’ll never get anywhere with that kind of attitude, but what can I do? In this day and age you need to earn a living, and that’s tough to do as an artist. And I’d take him a lot more seriously if his parents weren’t loaded. Oh, and art dealers …
I’m nursing my coffee when I see Gary, and I see his smirk before I see him, like a human cheshire cat separated from it’s head, and as he asks me how the piece is coming along, and something snaps inside me and I lay into him and he is shocked, reeling as, a day late, I’m saying something about painting these women because, no matter what they look like, no matter how different they seem to each other, they are all a part of me, and that’s what my art is about – all the stuff I wanted to tell him yesterday, to tell my boyfriend yesterday, but couldn’t get out of my mouth – and I realise eventually that everyone in the café is staring at me. And Jamie is stood there with his mouth wide open, which is so funny it makes me laugh despite what I’ve been saying. And that’s when I realise I’d be better off if I go home and work on that canvas.
Back home and I pour myself a large shot from the boy’s bottle of vodka from the freezer while I stare at the canvas, and the mobile phone he bought me rings like a guilty conscience. Last minute deal, babe he tells me I’ll be in the Munich office for 2 nights, and we talk about the details, about how he’ll pick up a couple of shirts at the airport on the way through, and I say I love you and he says yeah. And I think to myself more time to paint. And I roll a joint and put on a CD by that girl with the funny name, the one from Sweden or wherever, and afterwards I put on some more of his CDs, and I wonder why he calls them dance music when there’s no way on earth anyone could ever dance to them. Especially him. Not that he would ever even try – I’ve never seen him do more than tap his foot vaguely in time with the music.
And I’m looking at the canvas, and I’m trying to see what she wants to be. Because here’s the thing with a treated canvas – if you look carefully at it there is always some shape there, no matter how well you prepared it, and sometimes it feels like it knows what it wants to wear, what it wants to look like. And you can go against this, of course – you can paint whatever the hell you want to paint – but that shape will still be there underneath, peering up from the depths, and sometimes it’s just easier to go with it, to fill in the shape and see what it’s telling you it wants to be.
And I wake up on the lounge, and the congealed vegetable pasanda containers on the floor let me know that I did at least pop downstairs at some stage last night. Must have gone for a booze run, too, going by the ache in my head. And I’m looking at the canvas, at all the brush strokes, and I’m trying to work out what I’ve got there, and I’m thinking maybe it’s the Madonna and child, and I’m wondering why there’s a cross behind her, and I’m wondering why there’s all that red on there. And that figure slumped in the background – I can see he was standing up at some stage, but ended up with his head in his hands, weeping, the former image painted over and looking like a ghost, rising up to heaven.
And I make some coffee and have a cigarette to wake me up and I’m thinking and … ow, that period knife twist in my guts. And it is becoming clearer to me; I know what I’ve got to do. I go through the usual routine and then back to the painting, and I know what she is now. The outline takes shape, and I hone hone hone her all day, and I have the patience to do it because I have to. The smoke helps. I play some CD I picked up from the floor, then another, and another. And when I go to bed I can smell the smell of him on the pillows and the sheets, and I sleep curled up in the dent on his side of the bed, and I breath him inside of me.
See him? See how happy he is? She makes him happy like that. And he pulls her over and sits her on his knees, and he’s smiling inside and out. And later he makes them dinner – gnocchi with tomato, bacon and olive sauce, some good bread and a full bodied red wine, as rich and thick as the blood of Christ – and as she goes over to wash the dishes he pulls her over and onto him, and he kisses her like a wolf falling onto his prey. And I wake up, gasping like I’ve been under water for five minutes.
And the next morning it’s all there, and I can see why. So I run a bath, and I put on one of those soothing CDs, the one with the guy whose voice sounds as rich and thick as melted chocolate, and I take my coffee and my croissants with me, and I daydream that I’m studying at the Sorbonne, cliche-ing around the Left Bank. And afterwards I pull on some underwear and one of his sloppy old jumpers, and I can smell him so much I can feel his arms around me. I stand there inhaling him as I take one last run over her to make sure she’s beautiful, and she is beautiful, she really is. And I have a little daydream about taking her into uni, and I think about turning her in to Gary and saying nothing and smiling, and not getting into another inevitable argument about having done another painting with a naked woman in the centre and religious ikons around her, even though she is the actual ikon this time. And I think that if he does say anything about her then I can always quit, because I’ve got what I want from there anyway, and I have a roof over my head and no pressures in my life to stop me. And that’s exactly how I plan the day, but then I decide I’d rather have her company for one more day before I have to fight on her behalf.
And that night I hear his footsteps on the steel stairs outside, and I run over to jump on him, to hug him and hold him when he comes through the door, but he gives me his cheek and says he needs a shower because he stinks from the plane home, and he says this like I would care. She’s finished I tell him and point and smile, what do you think? He looks over and winces and murmurs excellent, and then heads down the hallway, past all those photos we took on our last holiday, and he turns into the bathroom and closes the door, and I hear the plumbing creak and moan. And afterwards he gets his laptop out and tells me he has to catch up on some work, so I switch on the telly and watch some programme about road rage without really concentrating, and after a cigarette he tells me he’s really tired and he heads off to our bed alone.
And I can’t sleep, so I end up back down at the cemetery and up my tree, and it’s a cool clear night, floodlit by the full moon. And I’m lying there on my stomach smoking when I see a tramp walking along the fence, peering through as he moves along, and eventually I realise he’s actually kissing the fence along it’s length. And when he draws level he looks up and smiles beatifically at me, and when he moves along I see the puddle where he stood, the two dry footprints and the tiny stream heading towards the gutter. He kisses the fence to its end, and I hear him whispering I love you over and over to it. And I realise I have my next painting, and I realise it doesn’t have to be judged; it will be just for me.
(August 2000)
I turn away so I don’t have to look at him, and then he drops it: oh yeah - one more thing. Maybe you want to … try something a little different this time. And something in my head goes Bang. What do you mean? I almost don’t screech, and he’s all palms out in front of him and well, maybe it’s time to try something … new; something away from your usual style and Jo, who I didn’t even realise was waiting for me around the corner comes back, picks up my bag and drags me away before I can think of anything to reply, muttering something under her breath, and maybe that’s a good thing because my mind is clouded over like a field in a pre-dawn light, except for a mental image of the penknife in my bag.
And later that night my boyfriend agrees with him, and he should know better by now. We’re onto a second bottle of red by this stage, plates congealing on the floor in front of us, and sitting on the blanket over the crap lounge that came with the flat, with the TV on and the sound down and a CD on. One of his, as usual. All I’m saying is maybe he has a point he says to the home decoration show on the TV, the smiling face of the presenter looking like she thinks every word he utters is gospel truth, all that naked women thing – it’s a bit depressing, isn’t it? Especially the way they all stare out at you like that, with those baleful eyes and all. And I feel every part of me inflate as he blunders on with you know, I could even get the bank to buy a few canvases – Maurice was saying how he’d like some art around the place to impress the clients. They like all that, apparently – makes them think we’re interested in more than just money. We could tell them we’re supporting and up and coming artist – they’d love it. But we wouldn’t want to scare them off, eh? and he does that smile that he thinks I love so much, and all I can smell is ammonia and sweat.
And before I even realise it I’m slamming the door and storming down the stairs, chased by his bloody smirk, and I’m across the road and down those dark hedge fringed laneways, getting smaller one after another, until it’s over the wall and into the cemetery next to the old church where that insane bell ringer goes to fuck with my Sunday mornings, and I’m climbing up the old yew tree to my usual branch, the big forked one where I can dangle and smoke and think. And I light the joint that I had in my pocket as the sky, pregnant with clouds, clears for long enough for me to see the over bright, almond shaped moon. And I sit there, trying not to think about what he said, concentrating on breathing in and out, and I start to think about how my mum used to hate it when I climbed the big willow tree out in the back yard, fretting about driving me to the hospital if I fell out, even though I never gave her any reason to worry. Well, not about that, anyway. She told me this so often that I used to fantasize about it, dreaming of the urgent drive from our little village, past the green across from the pub where I had my first kiss behind the wall out the back, down the road and past the supermarket and into town, the world rushing past like a storm driven ocean of green and grey. I’ve always liked to climb trees – I have the best ideas there, see the best paintings I’ll never paint – even though I know I’ll never remember more than flashes of the images I saw there when I return to earth. Just like my dreams.
I walk home with my head awash with images, and the air tastes sweet, like peaches. Up the stairs and I’m home, and he’s still on the lounge, watching that late night news discussion programme he likes, and he’s about to speak but I straddle him and stick my tongue down his throat and stop him. And then he moves to get the remote and put a CD on, but I don’t let him, and a politician drones on and on about healthcare reform or something as I grind up against him, and then his shirt is unbuttoned and his pants are down and I’m doing what I love to do. And later in bed he’s lying there asleep with his arm around me, his hand cupping my breast, until my leg starts to cramp and I undress myself of him and get up and go back to the lounge room. I light up and look at that big blank canvas in the corner because I can’t sleep. Sometimes insomnia just means more time to paint.
And the next morning he’s already gone and the canvas is prepared, and I can’t remember doing it, but it’s one less job to do. And it feels too early to be alive. And I wake up and I don’t know where I am, and then I realise that I’m on a train and my head is on a woman’s shoulder and it’s too early and my bag is on the ground between my legs. And I’m saying sorry and she says don’t worry dear, I didn’t have the heart to wake you – you looked so tired and she smiles, and I check to see if I drooled on her in my sleep. And I’m thinking of my painting, of what she’ll become, and I’m thinking of the Degas exhibition at the National, and I don’t realise it’s my stop until it’s too late, the doors are closing, bugger fuck, so I have to swap at the next stop and go back one and walk to Uni. And I go for a coffee in the café and ask around to see where everyone is up to with their final pieces, and Jamie is strolling around, bragging about being finished for the year, and I feel like stabbing him with a pencil. And I can’t shake the feeling even though he’s my mate and my drinking buddy when we play pool in the pub across the road on Thursday nights after late tutorial.
And I like Jamie, really I do, but he can be a bit of a pain in the arse sometimes. Like last week, after a few too many beers, when we got into a discussion about our art and what we wanted to do with it. He paints in that rough, would be if it could be graffiti style that is so popular on club flyers, by the way. He buys into the whole starving artist cliche, and wants to move to Budapest when we’re finished to concentrate on his art completely – he might get a job in a pub or something, but wants to churn out his art and sell it on and live off that. I can’t understand that philosophy at all – I’ll probably get a job of some sort and work on my art when I want – it will be art for its own sake, rather than what sells, and if someone likes it and wants to buy it then that’s great, but otherwise I do it for me and whoever I show it to. He just laughed at me and told me I’ll never get anywhere with that kind of attitude, but what can I do? In this day and age you need to earn a living, and that’s tough to do as an artist. And I’d take him a lot more seriously if his parents weren’t loaded. Oh, and art dealers …
I’m nursing my coffee when I see Gary, and I see his smirk before I see him, like a human cheshire cat separated from it’s head, and as he asks me how the piece is coming along, and something snaps inside me and I lay into him and he is shocked, reeling as, a day late, I’m saying something about painting these women because, no matter what they look like, no matter how different they seem to each other, they are all a part of me, and that’s what my art is about – all the stuff I wanted to tell him yesterday, to tell my boyfriend yesterday, but couldn’t get out of my mouth – and I realise eventually that everyone in the café is staring at me. And Jamie is stood there with his mouth wide open, which is so funny it makes me laugh despite what I’ve been saying. And that’s when I realise I’d be better off if I go home and work on that canvas.
Back home and I pour myself a large shot from the boy’s bottle of vodka from the freezer while I stare at the canvas, and the mobile phone he bought me rings like a guilty conscience. Last minute deal, babe he tells me I’ll be in the Munich office for 2 nights, and we talk about the details, about how he’ll pick up a couple of shirts at the airport on the way through, and I say I love you and he says yeah. And I think to myself more time to paint. And I roll a joint and put on a CD by that girl with the funny name, the one from Sweden or wherever, and afterwards I put on some more of his CDs, and I wonder why he calls them dance music when there’s no way on earth anyone could ever dance to them. Especially him. Not that he would ever even try – I’ve never seen him do more than tap his foot vaguely in time with the music.
And I’m looking at the canvas, and I’m trying to see what she wants to be. Because here’s the thing with a treated canvas – if you look carefully at it there is always some shape there, no matter how well you prepared it, and sometimes it feels like it knows what it wants to wear, what it wants to look like. And you can go against this, of course – you can paint whatever the hell you want to paint – but that shape will still be there underneath, peering up from the depths, and sometimes it’s just easier to go with it, to fill in the shape and see what it’s telling you it wants to be.
And I wake up on the lounge, and the congealed vegetable pasanda containers on the floor let me know that I did at least pop downstairs at some stage last night. Must have gone for a booze run, too, going by the ache in my head. And I’m looking at the canvas, at all the brush strokes, and I’m trying to work out what I’ve got there, and I’m thinking maybe it’s the Madonna and child, and I’m wondering why there’s a cross behind her, and I’m wondering why there’s all that red on there. And that figure slumped in the background – I can see he was standing up at some stage, but ended up with his head in his hands, weeping, the former image painted over and looking like a ghost, rising up to heaven.
And I make some coffee and have a cigarette to wake me up and I’m thinking and … ow, that period knife twist in my guts. And it is becoming clearer to me; I know what I’ve got to do. I go through the usual routine and then back to the painting, and I know what she is now. The outline takes shape, and I hone hone hone her all day, and I have the patience to do it because I have to. The smoke helps. I play some CD I picked up from the floor, then another, and another. And when I go to bed I can smell the smell of him on the pillows and the sheets, and I sleep curled up in the dent on his side of the bed, and I breath him inside of me.
See him? See how happy he is? She makes him happy like that. And he pulls her over and sits her on his knees, and he’s smiling inside and out. And later he makes them dinner – gnocchi with tomato, bacon and olive sauce, some good bread and a full bodied red wine, as rich and thick as the blood of Christ – and as she goes over to wash the dishes he pulls her over and onto him, and he kisses her like a wolf falling onto his prey. And I wake up, gasping like I’ve been under water for five minutes.
And the next morning it’s all there, and I can see why. So I run a bath, and I put on one of those soothing CDs, the one with the guy whose voice sounds as rich and thick as melted chocolate, and I take my coffee and my croissants with me, and I daydream that I’m studying at the Sorbonne, cliche-ing around the Left Bank. And afterwards I pull on some underwear and one of his sloppy old jumpers, and I can smell him so much I can feel his arms around me. I stand there inhaling him as I take one last run over her to make sure she’s beautiful, and she is beautiful, she really is. And I have a little daydream about taking her into uni, and I think about turning her in to Gary and saying nothing and smiling, and not getting into another inevitable argument about having done another painting with a naked woman in the centre and religious ikons around her, even though she is the actual ikon this time. And I think that if he does say anything about her then I can always quit, because I’ve got what I want from there anyway, and I have a roof over my head and no pressures in my life to stop me. And that’s exactly how I plan the day, but then I decide I’d rather have her company for one more day before I have to fight on her behalf.
And that night I hear his footsteps on the steel stairs outside, and I run over to jump on him, to hug him and hold him when he comes through the door, but he gives me his cheek and says he needs a shower because he stinks from the plane home, and he says this like I would care. She’s finished I tell him and point and smile, what do you think? He looks over and winces and murmurs excellent, and then heads down the hallway, past all those photos we took on our last holiday, and he turns into the bathroom and closes the door, and I hear the plumbing creak and moan. And afterwards he gets his laptop out and tells me he has to catch up on some work, so I switch on the telly and watch some programme about road rage without really concentrating, and after a cigarette he tells me he’s really tired and he heads off to our bed alone.
And I can’t sleep, so I end up back down at the cemetery and up my tree, and it’s a cool clear night, floodlit by the full moon. And I’m lying there on my stomach smoking when I see a tramp walking along the fence, peering through as he moves along, and eventually I realise he’s actually kissing the fence along it’s length. And when he draws level he looks up and smiles beatifically at me, and when he moves along I see the puddle where he stood, the two dry footprints and the tiny stream heading towards the gutter. He kisses the fence to its end, and I hear him whispering I love you over and over to it. And I realise I have my next painting, and I realise it doesn’t have to be judged; it will be just for me.
(August 2000)