Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

The artist described each of the paintings

looked from us to canvas to us again

his eyes aglow

told us what he liked about each one

described subject, color, object placement

even though his representational style

made it rather clear.

Two were stylized landscapes

one self-portrait

one a very young child, not more than a toddler

four still lifes with food or objects easy to discern.

What he did not tell is why he chose these subjects

what he hoped to capture or show or awaken

take, say, one of the imaginary landscapes

painted from images in his head, he said

not from a photo, not painted outdoors

not an actual landscape

the Spanish tendency to define things in the negative

fully at work here

a large-leafed plant that had no context in the forefront

used, he said, to create perspective

so the figure in the painting would be seen at a distance.

See how the leaves are bigger than the woman?

Without the plant there would be no perspective, no?

This was easy to see – form, color, perspective

but what he was expressing, seeking, exploring

he did not say.

What did he hope to evoke with a woman’s black silhouette

standing (walking? walking away?)

through an imaginary archway

in a forest improbably green and red

with a make-believe shiny gold path?

Four still lifes were hung next to each other

not created as an intentional series

but they’re ok next to each other, no?

Each a tableau of food-related items on a white table (cloth?)

he again described the subjects –

yellow cheeses

bottles in yellow, green and blue and a slightly red bowl

a bowl of red grapes and its reflection in a mirror

3 lemons and 4 bananas

this one lacking perspective

a thick blue stripe across the top of the canvas.

Indeed, their colors and images formed a cohesive palate

coalesced to form a greater story

but a story of what?

He described what he liked about each one

the colors of the bottles, the composition

the way the blue non-table space perfectly defined the white table

without any need for perspective

color could do it all.

It is a shame, no?

The one-week show ends tomorrow.

What a pain.

He will have to take down the paintings

which look good against the salon’s gray walls, don’t you think?

And certainly it is an honor sharing the salon with the other artist

he’s known for years.

He will take down the still lifes

the landscapes painted from imagination

the sweet natural pose of his pink-fleshed blue-eyed daughter with a barrette on top of her head

the man with an external face of calm and a sideways swipe of an interior self about to scream

the half-face of a tranquil man against a blue background with a double-arched stone bridge floating to his left

the self-portrait where he chose to paint himself just a few centimeters off center

the background of thick black paint swaths setting off the eerily white image and its contrasting blue muscles underneath

but the placement

being off center

that made all the difference, we see that, no?

I imagined his process

walking slowly through the market seeking interesting shapes of cheese wedges

padding though the house collecting

arms full of haphazard yellow, blue, red items

heading to his studio with its square table and white restaurant cloth

trying 1 lemon, then two, arraying bananas and cheese wedges, stacking them, turning them on a diagonal, bending down to see the image from straight ahead, walking around the table to get every angle, standing on a step stool to peer down from above

rejecting his wife’s hairbrush, the loaf of bread, the glass of milk, his daughter’s barrette, the chipped flower vase

the huge palette of paint

in another part of the house his wife’s exasperated sigh

lemons for the moist bizcocho weren’t where she’d left them

missing, too, the bananas for their daughter, just beginning solid foods

Would anyone want to look at a painting of lemons and bananas?

The counter was a mess of paint smudges

dusty flea market bottles

butcher paper rank with musty, dank aromas

from cheeses that started a bit off when he bought them

nothing was where she left it

like a children’s movie

mice or benevolent aliens came in each night to play

couldn’t quite put everything back when dawn broke the reverie

morning always seeming to break the reverie, no?

Tomorrow there would be the stack of canvases in the narrow hallway

already difficult to maneuver the stroller

it would become a test of marital loyalty

did she love him and his art more than their daughter

or would she carelessly bump the fragile canvases

eager to put distance between herself and him

growing smaller as she pushed the pram down the street

through the Arco de la Macarena

the thick stone archway looming after 500 years

toward the Basílica of the same name

7 pm mass beneath the mesmerizing, gold-crowned Virgin of Hope

jeweled and crying beneath

her mantle of gold embroidery and gold-plated cape

the deep repetitive clangs

of the bell tower’s bronze campanas shaking

the walls and floor of the studio

creating the slightest ripple in the objects

on the table with the white cloth.