The last painter (unfinished)

 Chapter One

“Painting is dead. And I killed her!” laughed the billionaire. Everybody stood up and started clapping as the man walked over to a gilded, ornate frame and pushed a button.

“The Mona Lisa.” He said into the microphone. And so the blank canvas became alive, layers of colour blossoming and shifting, revealing a perfect replica of the painting. To see such a famous work of art freshly painted, shining on the stage, gave it the quality of seeing it for the first time.

“At a cellular level, this is a perfect replica of the famous work by Leonardo da Vinci. It is indistinguishable from the real thing, but in a way, better. Give me The Terminator in the style of Edward Hopper.” said the billionaire, and the painting obliged, turning into a stylised version of Nighthawks At The Diner where Arnold Schwarzenegger was walking outside.

“Not a fan of art? To be honest, neither am I. But you can ask for any kind of content and our AI will oblige. Hey, paint me an awesome star wars painting I can hang in my den.” And the painting showed Darth Vader playing poker with other villains from the series.

“Or maybe I want to see a picture of a beautiful woman, high art, photorealistic 4k.” said the billionaire. The painting showed the most smoothest, forgettable person you’ve ever seen.

“Sorry, I meant to say 256k.” and the painting sharpened to an absurd amount, so much so that it seemed the woman had crystallised.

“This haptic screen can replicate the artists brush, or even their fingerprints. We’ve trained our artificial intelligences on the best works of art, combining machine learning and the creative industries to produce this new device that makes you the artist.”

“Imagine it. Anyone can now have a Leonardo da Vinci in their house. Or maybe you’re a small business, and need information up on the walls you can change at a moments notice. Or how about you’re caring for an elderly parent and you want to show them photos from their lives that they’ve never seen before? Now you can…with our new visual assistant, ArtI.” he said, again to rapturous applause. The painting showed photographs as the billionaire as a child, a boy riding a tricycle in a carpeted hallway whilst a woman with large hair crouched behind him, happy. This had never happened, but it gave everyone a similar generic feeling of nostalgia that they couldn’t wait to anticipate for themselves. The audience began shouting things out, making the image change rapidly.

 

She closed the laptop, though the latch was broke and so it opened again softly, mouth-like. Her eyes traced across its edge and over the table, across prints of paintings, seeing detail, forms caught in her peripheral vision, images piled on images. She picked through them with a mix of nostalgia and reproach, as anyone did looking back at their earlier work. Each painting represented a different time in her life, known only to her. Although she may not exactly remember the execution of the work, she could tell by the way each painting turned out how she felt at the time. Each of these memories had an extra sensation for her, not just remembering things that she saw, heard or thought, in fact they were beyond what could be described with the everyday human sensations. If she would ever try to describe them to anybody, which she didn’t, the closest she could have said was that it was as if she was an object experiencing an abstract concept. One of her memories may evoke a similar sensation as if she was a sheet that became twisted in the middle, increasing in rotation infinitely. Other memories made her feel how a cloud of ink underwater may intersect with a cliff face, or of a perfectly exact cube existing in a void. These sensations were simultaneously beyond her comprehension whilst feeling exactly like the time in which they happened. Of course, this had no bearing on her work. She rested her index finger on a print and pulled it towards her, displacing the other papers like a boat moving through a sheet of broken ice, until finally coming to rest in front of her.

It was a painting of herself. She had painted it when she was fifteen, still untrained, yet all the better for it. She looked at the girl looking out of the painting, head tilted slightly upward. She remembered looking back and forth between the mirror and her work, truly examining her face for the first time. The very slight asymmetry of the eyes and eyebrow, the way her nose formed and related to the rest of the skull, her mouth tightening with concentration. Her hair was still its natural brown, cut short around her ears that had gold hoops through them. She had been inspired by Rembrandt, promising herself that she would regularly do self portraits over her life in order to capture herself – both as a painter and as a person. She hadn’t painted herself since.

The self-portrait was the odd one out. The rest of her work tended towards other people, other things. Scenes from the Bible, Shakespeare, retelling historical moments, mythology, people embracing, acts of violence, a wide range of subjects all executed in exquisite detail and composure. Her painting recreated light in such a way that seemed more real than reality, at least that’s what the books said. Others liked her work as it was proper painting, men would point at it and say “Now that’s what I call art.” Others called her work old fashioned, seeming to have ignored the last two hundred years of art history, and as it was popular it must therefore be kitsch. She didn’t pay much attention to what others thought of her work, it didn’t really matter. Occasionally an interviewer would quote somebody else and expect her to respond, but she’d just shrug. The audience completes an artwork in whatever way they please. The artist acts as a midwife to bring these things into the world, but once they are in a gallery, they are essentially orphans, waiting to be given meaning by those that pass in front of them and look.

Now that she was looking at her body of work, she could identify the different periods of her life via her technique. The overly cautious early work, experimentation and development in her early twenties, her most recent work full-bodied and mature, whilst also growing in darkness as the years progressed. Her fingers fell onto another print that she pulled in front of her, the allegory of the fall.

It had taken almost a year to complete, and even then, she wasn’t sure if any work was completed fully. She found all of her works to be more at a stage of being abandoned mid-transformation than a sense of finishing something. She took out a cigarette and started smoking, reclining in her chair and looking through the window. Occasionally she’d flick ash into a dead coffee, looking up at the clouds, thinking of the lecture.

 

Beneath the same clouds was another artist. And another. And another. Some of them were drawing the same sky so that all the pictures could be put together to create a multidirectional record of the sky on that same day. The shape of the clouds, the contrast of the blue against enormous waves of brilliant, white vapour. Every day the sky was a psychedelic lightshow, offering great inspiration for many artists, even though by simply tilting your head back you could see the same thing that they did. It wasn’t just paint, but music, dance, poetry, anybody who created something in responsed to something else. An artist can be anything at all.

Though when we say artist we tend to think of the visual arts, particularly painting. If you were to ask anybody in England to name an artist, the majority would reply ‘The Mona Lisa’ and you would nod in agreement. And you may also ask them if they thought themselves to be an artist they would scoff at the idea, perhaps saying something like they couldn’t draw to save their life. They are right. A majority of artists cannot draw to save their lives, or even make themselves comfortable. The average income for an artist wasn’t enough to be bothered taxing. Days spent filling in forms, updating social media, processing invoices, applying for work, seeing exhibitions, traveling around, planning workshops, tidying studios and all of this before the act of making art had even begun. The majority of artists in England lived a frugal, precarious life, often haunted by the neuroanatomy that also fuelled their choice in career. Perhaps most hauntingly of all is the fact that anyone can be an artist and suffer a lifetime of bureaucratised poverty.

You may wonder why would anyone decide to do this as a job if it was so awful. Living off money that would make being on benefits more profitable, the artist will spend many hours in their studio, eating cold baked beans from a tin, staring at a window too filthy to see out of. All across the north of England, empty mills were turned into artist studios, divided again and again into something that resembled a dungeon. Cold all year round, a single sheet of wood would divide the rooms up and make it so you may be able to hear your neighbour sniffing and coughing throughout the day, but never able to have a conversation with them in the warren-like corridors of the studios. Paintings would rarely be finished, instead the artists would surround themselves with an archive of incomplete work, with their few finished pieces gathering dust over the years as a memento to themselves that they did, once, paint something. Rats would skitter about above and below, whilst the hours would tick by with nothing done and yet to have such a space was considered a luxury. Why choose such a life? If there wasn’t happiness or freedom or money, why would anyone choose to be an artist?

One artist was asking herself that same question. She was lying on her back and looking at the sky and thinking, her jacket rolled up into a ball and serving as a kind of pillow as she lay on the grass. A late April sun shone, the first warm day of the year, and so Alexandra Park was busy. The park lay on the side of Oxford Road that ran from the city centre down to the suburbs, also acting as a milestone between the inner and outer areas of the city. Miles of terrace houses surrounded the park, all made of brick, having once been the houses of industrial workers until now being mostly home to education consumers. She was one herself, perhaps the most mythologised and stereotyped course in any other field of study. It was much rarer for television comedians and other jokers to make references to those studying Russian literature or biotechnology, and from the hundreds of courses available, this course had a reputation of being a field of academia filled with such reverie it represented the quintessential university experience. She was an art student.

She also hated being an art student. Even before she had served her time, she was already questioning if that is what she really wanted. She had pitched her aspirations high and refused to consider anything less. If your dream is compromised before it begins, it is not your dream but somebody else’s. She had thought that she wanted to study Fine Art with a focus on painting. Since being young she had focused her efforts on one day going to university. The chance to study art at that level, the sort of conversations you would have with professors or other students, the atmosphere of studying in a library or living by yourself for the first time, the sort of opportunities that would be available to you after graduating. Each of these expectations had withered and died within the first few months of her study. Now that she was nearing the end of her second year, she was deciding between finishing her third and final year or just dropping out entirely and doing something else other than art. She sat up, flexed her shoulders and dusted bits of grass off her jacket, looking round the park at the people enjoying the day. Somewhere between the trees a thick bass ripped from a portable speaker. An enormous flock of birds had arrived, for some reason choosing Manchester as the place they would spend their endless summers. She started heading towards her lecture.

She had arrived half an hour before it opened, hoping to get a good seat, but found herself at the end of a long line leading to the doors of the lecture hall. Her pulse quickened yet she was standing still. Molly was a hero of hers. Just to be able to see her would be good, to be able to attend a lecture even better.

At last. The doors opened and people started to fill into the lecture hall. The large, fan-shaped room was dimly lit, much colder than the warm April day outside. Kalisa stood on her tiptoes to see if there was a spare seat nearer the front, almost losing her footing as somebody tried to push behind her. She went along the row and sat down. On each of the seats in the lecture theatre was a piece of paper that had some background of Molly and an agenda with topics they would cover. She scanned it before folding it neatly in two, then looked down towards the front of the lecture hall. People were still filing in when the speakers boomed, the Head of Art tapping a microphone and asking if people could hear her.

Molly waited behind the curtain, watching the Head of Art make her introduction, the light from the projector illuminating her from above the waist and casting a stark shadow behind. She talked of Molly’s accolades and awards, and mentioned again that the artist herself was an alumni at the very institution she was speaking at that afternoon. Prompting the audience to applause, out she stepped, taken aback by the standing ovation that swelled throughout the auditorium. She smiled, stiffening up, unsure whether to bow and feeling ridiculous for considering it. Instead she nodded, turning to the podium where her notes were. In the wings behind her, her assistant whispered something, though it was lost in the noise of the continuous clapping. She reached for a glass of water and noted her hand was shaking slightly. She had presented before, many times, though to return to Manchester Met made her suddenly uncertain and self-conscious. For a moment she thought to reveal these emotions to the audience, both to put herself at ease and show a kind of vulnerability, an awareness of the position she now stood in front of people who would have been her peers twenty years gone. Instead, she nodded over to the Head of Art, thanking her for the introduction and then thanked the audience for coming. She started to thank her assistant for setting up the lecture, though felt as though with all the thanks she was giving out it sounded as though she was receiving an award, and so the thanking stopped and the lecture began properly.

“What is art?” she asked, each word like a kick. She paused for effect. Somebody giggled. “This is something every artist asks themselves. What is it we are doing? What are we making? What is art for? Some of you may say things like truth, beauty or expression, but that which connects all potential reasons that we have art is that it communicates. Art is a language of ideas. It is how we feel about something when making it and those that see our art react to it in some way. At least, ideally.” She said, smiling at the drizzle of laughter out in the darkness.

“As a painter, my vowels and consonants are shape and tone, my words are colour, my sentences are composition. Yes? Though when I have painted something, does the viewer understand what I mean? This seems to me a more important question than what art is, as art can be anything. But is it successful as a means of communication between artist and audience? Can it speak for itself?”

“I refuse to explain my work, as if I did, there would be no point in making it. There is no bigger failure in art than that which is explained. Everything good in life needs no explanation. An explanation may help, as would a wider knowledge of things like art history, but in my view, this lends itself to appreciation rather than experience. Philosophy, politics, history, culture, these are all ways of talking to others about a thing rather than fully experiencing it yourself. Think of food, music, love – all of these things transcend language and are as personal to us as dreams. They do not need an explanation as we immediately understand them. This is my approach to work. Which is unfortunate as I have been asked to give a lecture about my painting to you, people studying art.”

“Twenty years ago I came to study here. I’ve sat where you are sat, watching artists talk about their work and themselves and then I graduated. I was in a few shows after finishing, but it felt a bit empty. I didn’t want my work to be measured by the standards of others, as I was more interested in my own. I wasn’t happy with the work I was producing. At a technical level it was alright, but it wasn’t quite where I wanted to be. I was lucky enough to get time to develop my skills, but also the way I thought about the art I was making. I gained confidence. I felt I really started being the kind of artist I wanted to be.”

And on the lecture went. She talked over some of her early work, following through to the present. She was never self-deprecating of her earlier attempts, instead talking about them with an even perspective as her most recent work, almost as if it wasn’t her work at all. It also helped because her early work was fantastic. From charcoal sketches to watercolour studies, each figure had character, each mark had purpose. If she had been dismissive of her early work when it was better than most would ever produce, it would create a bitter taste. The artist had a clear judgement on each image, as well as the occasional other work she would punctuate the lecture with.

The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy by Caravaggio. The Duchess of Alba and the Pious Woman by Goya.

The lecture finished and everybody clapped.

“Does anybody have any questions?” asked the Head of Art, walking back onto the stage. A forest of arms went up, and so the academic pointed at random into the darkness.

“Its less of a question more of a comment-“

“There are others wanting to ask questions, so if we could prioritise those, I’m sure everyone would appreciate it.” said Molly. The Head nodded, pointing at random again.

The next person to be picked started talking and talking, paraphrasing what had been said previously and putting it together in some strange calculation that led Molly to only be able to answer with a single word.

“Yes.”

“Thank you, we probably have time for one more question.” said the Head of Art, squinting at the crowd.

Kalisa looked over row upon row of art students down at the two figures lit by the lecture theatre lights. Molly was looking upwards and for a moment, their eyes met. Through the hundreds of other sets of eyes and the extreme brightness of the stage and the darkness in the seats, both women’s eyes seemed to lock onto each other’s and stayed for a second. And then another second.

“Ah, yes, I think you should ask the last question of the day.” said the Head of Art, smiling and pointing. A woman near the front stood up.

“I’m actually the programme lead for Fine Art here at MMU, and I just wanted to say thank you for such a wonderful lecture. It was really inspiring to hear about your practice and the journey you’ve been on since coming here. I’m also a huge fan of your work, I remember seeing it actually, your first show at the Tate. I was just wondering, what is your favourite colour?”

“Oh, it’s brown.” said Molly

“Interesting.”

“Well thanks again to Kalisa for giving a lecture here today. If everyone could make their way out of the lecture theatre, we’ve already run over by five minutes.” said the Head of Art. And that was that. People started shuffling away, whilst Kalisa looked for a way to get nearer the stage. She may have missed her chance to ask the question she had been preparing, but she might not get chance again. Squeezing past a steady line of people walking up the stairs, she slowly made her way down. A few people had already gathered around Molly, who was shuffling towards the back of the auditorium.

“I just want to say thank you.” said a student. Everybody was spending a lot of time thanking each other. They would thank each other for the initial thanks and round it went forever, a kind of eternal gratitude, but not much else got done. Molly’s assistant had already taken her by the elbow and tried to guide her towards the exit whilst various professors thanked her for speaking. By the time Kalisa had reached the stage, she was out the door. For a moment she wondered if she should give up. She didn’t want to appear desperate or creepy, chasing her down, but when else would she get the opportunity to speak to her? She had something to ask. She may never get another chance. She started running back up the stairs of the theatre and into a row of students coming the other way for the next lecture.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” she repeated, pushing her way past people and out.

 

“Was I alright?” said Molly to her assistant.

“Of course, of course. The taxi should be here soon.” She said, looking down at her phone. It was a little graphic of a car floating along a map, stopping and starting in time with a taxi a few streets away, projecting its location to an orbital satellite and the assistants phone.

“Excuse me.” Kalisa said, gulping for breath. The others turned.

“May I help you?” said the assistant, stepping forward. She fulfilled many roles for Molly, from organising her calendar and transport, liaising with galleries and museums and her current, most valuable role, of acting as a social shield.

“I was just in the lecture then and wanted to ask a question, though didn’t get time.”

“A car is coming to pick us up, but if you want to pass me along your e-mail we can get back to you.” Smiled the assistant, whilst Molly looked over her shoulder. She lit a cigarette and watched.

“I want you to train me.”

“Sorry, Molly doesn’t have time to take on any personal tuition at the moment.” the assistant said in monotone. They had heard this request almost any time they ventured out. A young artist eager to be taught by Molly, sometimes arriving at restaurants or weddings or other horrible places with a portfolio and a wild smile. They had heard all sorts of different pitches, why it was important to teach that one person in particular. That they had drive, or passion, or money, or would be willing to give up everything, and so on. And the answer was always no. If a stranger came up to you and asked you to train them, the answer would likely be similar. To be a teacher required a certain amount of time and commitment, but before all that, what connection would you have with this person? Who are they?

“I know this isn’t the best way to go about it, but I see this as being the only chance I’d get to ask.”

“I’m very busy at the moment, preparing for a big show.”

“I want to learn from the best.” Kalisa said. Molly smiled.

“There is no such thing as the best artist. Some have good technique, others with their expression or inventiveness, but none of that really matters. It’s all subjective.”

“I don’t agree. Some artists are better than others. With that in mind, there must be one that is better than all the others combined. I think that’s you.”

“Whilst I appreciate the compliment, I can hear from your philosophy that we wouldn’t see eye to eye. Sorry.” Molly said.

“The taxis here.”

“We don’t need to agree. Did you share the views of whoever taught you?”

“It was nice to meet you but I have to go.”

“Sorry to bother you. I drew you this.” Kalisa said, holding out a folded piece of paper. Molly smiled and took it before getting into the back of the black cab. As the car drove away she waited a moment before turning back, though the young artist had disappeared.

“Some people can’t take no for an answer.” the assistant said. Molly looked at the piece of paper. It was the programme that the university had placed on the seats in the lecture hall, she recognised the text that she had agreed to a few days before. Opening it up she expected that the young artist had maybe drawn her, as had other desperate artists wanting to leave an impression. She collected those drawings, keeping them in a box at home that she would sometimes take out and look at. There was a whole gallery in the box, dozens of drawings of her over the years in various states of quality. Some were executed well, others were laughable, though she quietly admired anybody who had the confidence to hand another artist their own work. Just as you may feel apprehensive about cooking for a renowned chef or performing for a famous musician, to show another artist your work in this way, hoping that they would perhaps see something in you that would warrant taking them on as a student, was bold and often the behaviour of an obsessive fan or somebody very annoying. A portrait of Molly was an attempt at both flattery and showing off. Though when Molly opened the paper she was surprised to find an illustration of hands.

There were two sets of women’s hands, each held in such a way that the fingers reached out to each other but didn’t touch. They were reminiscent of God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but also somewhat like the children’s game of Cat’s Cradle. Hands were difficult to draw, particularly with the anatomy of the fingers each bending in a certain way. This is why many illustrations had people holding things or obscuring the hands in some way, similar to standing in front of a large group of people. What do you do with the hands? To get the correct proportions of the hand required a good knowledge of its structure as well as being able to harmonise the expression of each finger, which the illustration did very well. To draw such a thing in the dark, with no reference, required good skill. It must be traced, she thought.

End of chapter 1.

 

Molly attending a life drawing class

She wore a face mask to try and hide her identity, though she was still recognised from time to time, the blue mask made people give her a wide berth and not tend to make eye contact.

The life model sat in the centre of the room atop a pile of towels, an element of comfort against the varnished wood floor. The early evening sun was coming through the high windows and so columns of light reached down and over the models legs so that they seemed so white that they glowed. She was facing away from Molly, though the tip of her nose peeked out from the side of her cheek. These different angles of the head, from the back, below, above, gave a drawing a certain amount of realism. When people drew heads they often looked out from the paper, as if a reflection, though sometimes turning very slightly this way or that. They are drawing the idea of a head. When somebody is drawing a head they are often fuelled by their preconceptions of what a head is, which is also true when drawing somebody from real-life. An artist may look at a model, looking at the shape of their eyes and where they sit within the muscles and skin around them, the way light reflects and a shadow falls. And then they will look down at their drawing, and without looking back again, draw two large circles with dots in the middle.

It takes a certain amount of practice, sometimes year upon year, hundreds, thousands of drawings, but eventually an artist can draw with a certain type of realism. They can draw eyes really well, even doing the shading, and can place them at any angle and part of any expression. A good portrait. You may be howling with laughter in your chair at such an idea, that being able to draw realistically doesn’t necessarily mean that it is good. You may even be dabbing your eyes at such a naïve idea of art – that realism is the absolute. To do so would be the same as stating that a medical text about the effects of ageing is more realistic than poetry about getting old, and therefore better. Now you’d be shaking your head from side to side, before standing up and giving the following monologue about the power of art;

“I believe there is more to art than it serving to merely recreate life. Painting is a way of expressing something that goes beyond photography, something between dreams and ecstasy. These feelings can’t be expressed in mathematics. You cannot explain love with science, or use it to catch a ghost. It is the way we can speak to each other across expanses of time and express our inner world – the only one that truly matters.”

And everyone else would stand up and clap. You would be right of course, though there is a place from which observing reality can make these expressions all the better. From the cartoon character to architectural drawing, observing the human form and being able to replicate it in two dimensions is beneficial to any other artform. The shape of our body, from the structure of the skeleton, the flesh is wrapped around it, decorated with fat to give it curves, finally a coat of skin and hair, all of it coming together and then being worn through time – this is a person. A combination of things, of limbs, of shadows, emotion, ideas,

How does one observe this? Is looking at somebody and drawing them not enough? One of the issues somebody drawing has is that their emotions get in the way. Only someone displaying symptoms of psychopathy is able to accurately draw somebody with little practice. A person must be able to disengage their emotions and the way that they relate to the person they are drawing. This person, the subject, can easily be transformed between being seen with the eye before the hand moves. Is the artist attracted to their subject? Or perhaps they dislike them? Do they see themselves in the subject? Are they projecting somebody else they know onto the subject? Is the artist necessarily aware of any of this occurring? All of these questions are answered whilst the drawing is happening. People will often put an element of themselves into their work subconsciously. A large head shows overconfidence, perhaps, or if the artist has an injured arm, so the figures they draw will also replicate these injuries. A figure with small hands could mean the artist is concerned of their drawing ability – or perhaps they are drawing somebody with small hands. Any of this is true or completely made up, though the main thing is that we understand that each of us can play the role of a sort of unqualified therapist when it comes to art. We can speculate on the artist, coming up with all sorts of psychological explanation and imagining the artists baggage, whilst hopefully retaining enough awareness that what we infer in a paintings meaning says as much as it does about us than it does about the artist. This mistranslation, from subject to artist to audience, is part of the sublime act of creation.

Yet to resist this mistranslation – or at least attempting to get close to it – the act of seeing must take place. To see, perchance to dream. You may have met an artist or two in your life, and one of the first things they brag about is how they see things differently. They may give you delightful anecdotes about rotating objects using the powers of their imagination, or perhaps talk about things such as beauty being everywhere as you are stood in an alley vaping. One of the important books to anybody studying art is called Ways Of Seeing by John Berger. This book is formatted in such a way that there is ample room to write their own bon mots or draw cartoons in the wide margin, but even hearing the title will give a person a moment to pause. Ways is plural, meaning there is more than one way to see. But for all this time you thought there was only one way of seeing, the one you’ve always done. This turns out to be wrong.

 

Molly looked at the way the model was posed and referred to the framework of her own drawing. She had drawn a series of delicate rectangles, representing the head, torso and legs. Each of these rectangles related to each other the same way the model was sat in the middle of the room. By extending the arm and holding a pencil, the measurement of the head is registered by moving the top of the pencil to the top of the head, and the thumb then gently slides up to their chin. This measurement is then moved along the model to judge how long they are. Other measurements can be taken and compared, such as the width of the shoulders and the length of the torso, or where the wrists line up with the hips. So long as you know that one section of the drawing is correct, the rest of the drawing should be in proportion if these measurements are studied. At this stage, Molly rarely needed to actually take a measurement as she did this automatically. With a few movements of the pencil, a shoulder and neck emerged, followed by an arm, then a tilted diamond-shape that became the side of the model and so on. The room was becoming very warm, particularly beneath the face mask she was wearing, but she didn’t notice it. If you could look closely at her pupils, they were tracing the exact line around the model and then flicked back and forth across her form, almost as if the eye was attempting to print the image.

The life drawing tutor would pace in a circle around the room, holding a thumb up to their chin and forefinger across their mouth. Now and then she would stop by an easel, lean down so her knees cracked, and whispered words of encouragement to one of the students. The tutor had never advised Molly, though sometimes would pause for a moment to watch her work. It was rare that Molly noticed, instead being entirely focused in the act of drawing. After a while the tutor clapped softly and they had a break. The model put on a dressing gown and did a lap of the easels, whilst Molly stepped outside for a cigarette. It was humid, the sky was beginning to turn orange. Out in the street children played, running between parked cars, the thumping of their trainers mingling with them calling to each other. Somewhere nearby she could hear somebody playing a guitar and singing a few bars quietly. The heat reminded her of holidays, a memory of being abroad and the feeling of bare arms and legs. It had seemed like a long winter following a rainy summer previous, so the sudden heatwave was welcome. Molly finished her cigarette and went back inside, with the model now in a new pose. She started a new drawing. 

The sun had set when she arrived home but the air was still warm. She had set a lamp in her living room on a timer so that she didn’t come back to a dark house. Partly this was to ease an anxiety of flicking a light switch and finding someone in her house, which had been such a recurring thought over the years that she did the best she could to avoid turning lights on. She had got round to thinking that if there was an intruder in her house that she’d prefer not to know than catch somebody stood in her living room, surprised by the light like an insect. For this reason they were no lightbulbs were in the ceiling fittings. She began to walk from room to room, lighting candles and placing them in lanterns or occasionally reaching down to turn on a table lamp. Her house was long, with windows that looked out across the trees and hillside opposite that all now started to shine with soft yellow and orange light as the night set in. The air in the house felt stale. Molly went through her kitchen and out onto the patio. She had styled it after porches she had seen in American films, always liking the idea of sitting by your house, outside yet sheltered. Unfortunately the roof wasn’t big enough to stop the rain, it always seeming to come in diagonally and made the porch damp most of the year. Nevertheless, it was a good spot to sit in in summer. She lit a cigarette and relaxed into a deep, curved chair, thinking of the day just gone and the one after. Her view was almost entirely dark, with all the roads and houses lying at the front of the house, leaving the black shadows of trees barely perceptible from the rest of the night. The stars were out. She left the door open when she went back in, and a whisper of a breeze made a candle dance. Molly looked into the candlelight. Her penchant for lighting candles also led to an elaborate sprinkler system being installed in the house, with the copper pipes running along the ceiling and over each other. This slightly industrial feeling was amplified as Molly had decided to have no images on the walls. There were no photographs, prints, paintings, drawings or wall hangings – the main reason was that she saw art as work and didn’t want to be reminded of it when it wasn’t being done. As a house without decoration can feel a bit bare, she had opted for flowers, specifically dried flowers as they didn’t need watering and she could leave her house for long lengths of time without worrying that her flowers would dry up any further. These bouquets of yellow and brown flowers and the slightly dim lighting gave a certain sepia quality to the house, like an old photograph preserved in honey.

(Something about thinking about this show that’s coming up.)

She made a cup of tea and reviewed the drawings from the class she had taken earlier. Each of the studies were drawn with a shapeliness of figure, lines that curved and intersected at angles that made the drawings have a certain richness. It looked as though each figure had a joy to them, which didn’t go in harmony with the large shaded areas that they occupied. Most of the page was black, besides the figure in the centre, her skin the colour of paper. Molly had a great admiration for the strong contrast between light and dark. Her favourite artists used this technique, chiaroscuro, to great effect, creating paintings that had a strong sense of drama or mystery to them. She liked using this technique as she wanted to see how little of a person you needed to represent in order for it to be still recognisable as a person. She took a sip of tea and went to put the drawings on a pile of firewood. It had been a while since she had needed to use her woodburner, and so drawings from the previous weeks were layered between the bits of log she had against a wall. She thought to herself that there were too many images in her house. She wanted to take out older drawings and look again, maybe work them a bit further. With her fingers resting on crumpled paper, she started to think about her upcoming exhibition.

“No.” she told herself, walking back towards the kitchen. It was important that she didn’t think about work too much as it made her feel insane. Instead, she made some miso soup and sat at a big wooden table with one chair. She wondered what her assistant was doing. She felt restless. It was still warm and she walked out into the field beyond her garden. She sat on a rock and started smoking, looking at the stars and trying not to think about work.

*

Kalisa was in her room, sat by the window with a sketchpad in her lap. The window was open and with it came the heat. It was the hottest day of the year so far and was only late April. Outside she could hear her housemates footsteps go past before closing her own bedroom door. Kalisa closed the sketchpad and drank from a glass she had filled with ice cubes, though they had now turned into tepid water. Her phone went off. She ignored it. She turned and looked at the garden beyond her window. Withington was a suburb in the south of the city, the houses on her street had been built in the post-war boom. All the houses on her block had gardens, each in varying stages of upkeep. A few houses down the street somebody was learning piano, faintly doing musical scales that kept repeating and repeating. Kalisa’s eyes were fixed on a distant bathroom window, a square of yellow, though wasn’t paying much attention to what she was looking at. Her mind was wandering. The piano continued to play.

In Kalisa’s mind she was picturing a scene. The sky was a brilliant orange and the clouds were flecked with gold. An angel was descending amongst a forest clearing, a beautiful black man with a halo, and he landed softly in the glade. She played this part a few times from different angles, adding the gentle rustle of grass, the sounds of birds around. The angel walked through the forest, with beams of light shining through gaps in the branches above and everything was green. The angel went to sit by the edge of the forest. There was a farmstead ahead of him, the fields empty stretches of dirt. Through a barn door he could see a man threshing the freshly cut wheat in a dip dug into the ground. As he worked in the barn, the air thick with motes of grass dust and sweat, he looked up and saw the angel sitting beneath an oak tree.

Kalisa went through what she had imagined backwards and forwards, looking at things closely or from a distance, adding bits of detail, playing with it. It was a scene she had returned to many times, falling into certain habits like setting it in the evening or having the angel walk through the forest take longer and longer with each picturing. She had been particularly focused on this scene for a few weeks, feeling an urge to paint it but feeling as if she couldn’t do it justice. Her imagination had created something between a film, a 3D model and a dream. To just select one image from the scene wouldn’t do it justice. Her ideas were far more advanced than her skill. So she would sometimes get to imagining the scene and how to paint it for more time than she noticed. Though she was beginning to grow sick of it, wanting to be done with it so she could move on. Kalisa thought through the angel landing in the forest. From his perspective, over his shoulder shaded by the tree, looking down at the buildings by the farm and Gideon thrashing wheat. From Gideon’s perspective, looking up through the dust at an angel sat beneath a tree. The colours rarely changed, she felt the harsh oranges and reds were the perfect lighting, but everything else flowed in size and shape. The way these shapes were placed, the composition, was always being tweaked and fiddled around with when she got around to the idea of imagining painting such an image. She pictured the way she would paint it, lacking the photorealistic accuracy of her mind but bringing out the feeling the paint replaced it with. Just as instruments can interpret a feeling and be played in a way to make someone feel it, paint also shared this quality. She just wasn’t sure how this scene made her feel. She felt a desire to portray the scene she had created so others could see it, though it wasn’t about her being the one that painted it but more of a way of exorcising the image out of her mind.

(perhaps put somewhere above ‘to display the religious experience as a painting is a teaching tool. Anything beyond that becomes idolatry.’)

The blur of a human body appeared in the bathroom window. Its naked form bended and twisted behind the frost glass. Kalisa turned away and back to her room, drumming her knees for a moment. She knocked on her room mates door.

“Come in.” she called. She was sitting in the corner of the room, playing a game on a desktop.

“What you doing?”

“Soda water and cocaine. Want some?”

“I mean what you playing?”

“Some gacha game. You get these little characters. It plays itself.” She said, turning back to the screen for a moment.

“Do you want to go out? It’s too hot in here.”

“Sure, gimme five minutes.” She said. Kalisa went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, enjoying the cool air it emanated, as well as a hint of wilting leaves.  She took out an orange, rolling the cool skin between her hands, before beginning to peel it from the top in a spiral shape. This single piece of skin was deposited on a kitchen counter in the shape of an orange, though hollow. When she ate it she found the cold fruit pleasing. Her roommate finally came downstairs and they went out into the night.

 

The street was empty. The remnants of barbecue smoke clinging in the air and appearing as fallen spots of ash on the bonnets of cars. They passed the house where the pianist lived, who had moved to hesitantly playing a prelude by Bach. The staccato chords and slow movement of the music fit the evening, some sort of energy beneath the evening lull that followed warm weather and drinking. A few streets away they watched a fox canter across a road and into a garden.

“You going to stay on in summer?” said Kalisa.

“Course, no way I’m going back home. You?”

“Likewise. I was thinking of taking a little holiday.”

“Oh yeah, you should! Where you going?”

“Usually I’d say somewhere hot, but maybe something a bit cooler would be nice. This weather is too much.”

“I might go camping with some mates. You should come.” She said, taking out a baggie from her top, parting it open and snorting a little bit of cocaine off her housekey.

“I dunno if I like camping. I like my bed.” Said Kalisa. They walked down an avenue, the fresh buds on the trees seemed to glow. New growth was always lighter in colour before darkening and shifting hue. The shadows from the semi-naked trees danced across the road as they made their way to the high street running through the middle of Withington.

Here it was busy, students stood around the entrances of takeaways, around the doors of bars. They walked past the off-license, where the shop keeper and alcohol were behind toughened glass, all lit up with a horrible cold light. An electric bus passed them quietly, making Kalisa jump as it suddenly appeared in her peripheral vision. They passed a bar and went into the all-night café. It did mocktails and Ethiopian street food, both of which were bitterly expensive, but it was quiet and dark and sober. Kalisa and her roommate went to sit in a booth, passing a group of New Catholics discussing martyred saints. 

“Saint Catherine has a good symbol, it goes with everything.”

“A wheel is too easy. Besides, as soon as she touched it, it shattered.”

“Well I like Simon the Zealot.”

On and on they went, whilst Kalisa went to the bar and back. A tea light in a glass jar flickered as she put her drink down.

“Did you hear back from that artist yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I think it was brave what you did. Even if you don’t hear from her, it was good you asked. Her loss.”

“I’m over it.”

“Have you heard about the serial killer who is targeting millionaires?”

“Is this a joke?” Her housemate laughed.

“No, some guy’s going round killing rich people, never leaves any evidence. He’s gaining a bit of a following for it, loads of conspiracy theories about.”

“How do we know rich people aren’t just killing each other off for the inheritance, it’d the perfect time to bump someone off.”

“That’s one of the theories!”

“You and me don’t have to worry about him anyway. Don’t think I’ll ever be rich.”

“You will, you’re so talented.”

“Yeah, yeah. Most artists don’t make enough to pay tax. Not that I’d do it for the money.”

“Gauche.”

“I can’t think of anything else to do.”

“That’s why you’re going to be rich one day. I wouldn’t mind being an artist you know. I’d do something like pottery or making little clay people. I used to be good at making them out of blu-tack.” She said, and she was right. As a little girl she would go into her dad’s office and tear off a piece of blu-tac from the flat wad it came in. She would then go to her room and roll the blu-tak into sausage shapes, then spheres, before bending and manoeuvring different pieces so that they resembled animals or people. She would use her fingernail to push lines onto the figures to resemble hair or other bits of detail, learning as she played making different models and rolling them back up into a ball for another one. These little figures would eventually settle onto a final shape and then added to a row of other models she had made. Her parents liked her model making, sometimes spying on her through the door and smiling. One day she decided to make an extra big model and ripped off half of the blu-tak in the drawer. She set about making it, understanding quickly that the weight was an issue for the legs to hold. The whole structure kept slowly drooping down and not staying in place. She muttered in frustration but continued, hollowing out part of the top section, making it so the figure she was making was sitting down. It had taken a long time but she was finally pleased with it. It was a woman sat with her hands on her lap, her head tilted back slightly. Most of her fingerprints had been rubbed away but there were still the traces here and there. Once it was finished she sat and looked at it. She put it behind all her models, giving it a slightly maternal feel as her largest and most detailed sculpture was surrounded by her earlier, smaller ones.

A week later it was missing. She looked all around her room for the blu-tak woman. She paused, wondering if her dad had taken it. She went into his office, the venetian blinds were down so that the sun was a soft glow. It wasn’t on his desk. She went over to it and opened the drawer. Her model had been squashed, pressed flat and nestled back between the wax paper with the rest of the blu-tak. She started crying, feeling something she had never felt before – the sensation of something you have created being destroyed. Her mum ran upstairs, shouting after her.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“Dad stole my model! He took it! He’s ruined it!” she said, beginning to sob. Her mum looked down into the drawer at the blu-tak. Most of the features remained, smooth lines pressed together where detail had been.

“Oh it’s okay, it’s only blu-tak.” her mum said, hugging her. “I thought you hurt yourself.”

The little girl didn’t say anything, as she was afraid of what she would say. After she went to her room and rolled all of the models into a ball then stuck it on the wall, never making a model again.

Back in the bar, she didn’t reveal this anecdote as she still found the experience painful, but recently she was experimenting with talking about it.

“I should get you some clay, maybe you’ll like it.” Kalisa said. Her roommate almost burst into tears, so just shook her head before having a drink.

“I’m going to the bathroom to do coke, want to come?”

“I’ll wait here with the bags.” Kalisa said, feeling uncertain why her housemate’s mood had seemed to change suddenly when she brought up clay.

She looked down at her drink and screwed up her nose. She had drunk the virgin mojito too quickly, and with each drink costing as much as a bottle of wine, was hesitating before buying another. The maintenance grant she got for studying wasn’t due for another week. Finishing off the drink, she looked around the bar. There was a woman on her laptop across the way, the light from the screen making her appear slightly spectral in the dingy lighting. Behind the New Catholics were a young couple holding hands across the table. Kalisa thought they looked tacky but her eyes lingered on the couples hands touching as her roommate came back.

“Let’s go dancing.”

“I’m skint.”

“They have a weekend job at my place, you wanna do that? Earn some money?”

“I’d rather be skint.”

“I know! C’mon, let’s go into town. I don’t want to go home and play that stupid game. I’ll lend you.”

“Okay then. But I’m not having a late one.”

 

It was a late one. The taxi drove them towards home as the sun was rising. Kalisa tried to track where they were but kept drifting off to sleep.

“We’re here.” the driver said. They both sat up, surprised they had arrived home. They went in and made some toast.

“I can’t believe how loud them birds are.” said the roommate. They tried to walk quietly by the other room-mates door and into the living room, where they drew the curtains and sat next to each other under a blanket and watched rubbish on tv before falling asleep.

 

 

Chapter Three

 

Kalisa was walking through the studios at university, nobody was there. The morning sun came through the windows and lit her way through the painting studio. Paintings and drawings lay incomplete on desks, others were hung above them as a reminder that work can be finished. Brushes with stiff bristles, jars filled with brown liquid, cheap tubes of paint, expensive drawing equipment that was never used, piles of papers, sketchpads, reference photography, books of philosophy, typewriters, canvas frames and pieces of food were on every surface, with extra trolleys and pieces of furniture brought in to be cluttered with further art student paraphernalia. She was interested in the images that were produced by her peers. There were some that she liked and a lot that she didn’t, but most of it didn’t make her feel anything. The worst kind of art if art was to be measured in such a way, but it isn’t. Sometimes it was because she didn’t get what the image was trying to convey. Other times it seemed so simple that there was nothing to respond to. With the morning sun slicing an orange square against a wall, she went into another of the studio spaces and found someone there. One of the other students was diligently working on a very small and complicated drawing, pinching a mechanical pencil lead between thumb and middle finger.

“Good morning.” she said, glancing up and blinking a few times.

“I thought I was the only one here.”

“I’m an early bird. Do most of my work before people arrive.”

“I was just being nosey, won’t interrupt.” said Kalisa, returning a smile before the other student went back to the drawing. Across the piece of paper she had drawn a very elaborate maze. The lines had barely any space between them, creating a dense cloud of lines and angles that would take hours to complete. It didn’t make Kalisa feel anything, but it seemed like the artist enjoyed doing it. This was a good way to measure the quality of art, but it isn’t. As she started to walk towards the canteen, Kalisa thought about what made art good. Technical ability, beauty, emotional resonance, cultural significance, any of these things could be used to quantify if art was good or not, if such a thing was possible. Through applying these sorts of statements, of good art and bad art, creates a hierarchy that doesn’t necessarily exist. Is the Mona Lisa better than the Sistine Chapel? Who would win in a fight between IKB 191 and The Death of Marat?

The other way of looking at it would be an art equalist. A masterpiece in a gallery is equal to the drawing a child did. Everything is of equal value and should be celebrated as such. But then what if it turned out the child had done the drawing under duress? And then what if this masterpiece in a gallery inspired somebody to realise that they had the cure for cancer? You might be thinking, this hypothetical situation suddenly got complicated! You can relax of course, it is only an imaginary scenario. But to those that honestly see all art as equal to another, they can swap any photos they may have up on their walls with branded packaging material as they are equal. They can try and fit a twenty foot tall minimalist sculpture made out of rusted steel into a retirement home as that is as equal to the usual watercolour landscapes that haunt such buildings. To view all art as equal is to say that the different signifiers and meaning that make up something doesn’t matter. There is no preference between a painting that is extremely pornographic and a sheet of A4 paper with a cartoon dog drawn on it in biro, as all images are equal. You don’t see colour, or shape, or meaning, just a surface that holds no value other than it is art and is basically nothing.

Kalisa wasn’t such an extremist of course, she thought that all art was worthwhile and that she liked some more than others. She thought of the intricate maze drawing she had seen earlier, on reflection she found she liked it. It had helped knowing that the artist was one of the first people at the university and would spend hours with a little nib drawing intricate labyrinths, Kalisa would now look out for her whenever she would get to the studios early. Her main intention for coming in so early was to do some work herself, but after walking around and looking at the work of others, she found herself more contemplative than wanting to do anything necessary. Besides, it was the Friday before a bank holiday. Any work that wasn’t finished would dry out over the long weekend, and she liked to continue painting whilst things were still wet.

As she drank her coffee she thought of the weekend ahead, watching people sitting in the small park between the art building and the library. The university was made up of several buildings, some interconnected, others alone. Giant glass obelisks surrounded the nucleus of the park, the architecture as a record for how much money the university had to spend. Building works were happening everywhere, beginning to push the boundaries of the university further. Just a bit north of the university complex were dozens of skyscrapers, each of them intending to be homes for students yet were entirely empty.

Kalisa’s phone rang. She looked and didn’t recognise the number. After watching the animation a few times it stopped.

‘Who is this?’ she texted.

‘Its Molly, can I talk to you?’ was the reply. Kalisa’s stomach felt as if it plunged metres down. She didn’t know what to do for a moment, touching her face to wipe away something imaginary. She phoned back.

“Hello.” they both said at the same time. Molly smiled, looking out through her porch and to the fields beyond.

“Are you really her?”

“I’m me, yes. Have I caught you at a bad time. Is it too early?”

“No, no, I’m good. How’s it going?”

“Sure, I’m good. I know this might be last minute, but I wondered if you wanted to come and visit my studio this weekend.”

“Really? I mean, yes that would be good.” said Kalisa. They organised it, finished the call and Kalisa sat at the table grinning.

 

A couple of days later Kalisa got off a train. Besides the concrete platform and a shelter with faded plastic windows there wasn’t much else. It was a station between towns, with a short walk to a village at one end of a road. The other went away into nature. Along each side of the road were a line of low hedges, their shadows beginning to narrow as the sun reached its zenith. Rummaging in her bag, she found her waterbottle and phone, taking a long drink as she traced to path to Molly’s studio. It was about three miles away, a mix of curling country lanes and A roads. When she looked yesterday she had thought about crossing a patch of woodland to cut the journey in half, but was also worried that could end up making her late. After reapplying some sun cream, Kalisa set off walking along the road that’s edges danced in heat haze.

Out on the fields a circle of birds walked, sometimes pecking at the soil or flying a short distance to be close to another. There were no cars on the roads, nor was there pavement. The journey was long and twisty before Kalisa arrived at the woodland she had thought about taking a shortcut through. It was the second day of May and the forest was fully green. More birds sang in the dense branches, as did the undergrowth shiver with the movement of other animals. It seemed like a good moment to rest. Kalisa leant against a wall shaded beneath the dense leaves of the branches that loomed overhead. She took a deep drink from her waterbottle and relaxed her shoulders. Where she wiped away the sweat it mixed with the oiliness of the suncream to create a naked streak across her forehead. The scent of the suncream combined with the new growth of the forest and it reminded Kalisa of a distant summer. A little girl on a family holiday, seeing a forest for the first time. There was parks and a scraggly bit of woods near where she grew up, but she remembered standing at the edge of the ancient forest feeling a sense of awe. True wildness. Her mother was calling for her, she had walked off alone, but didn’t dare call out where she was. In the present Kalisa checked the label on the sun cream to see what gave it its smell before setting off walking again.

The road took a long curve around the woodland, with the fields and hills around her devoid of any human activity. Passing a patch of long grass, a grasshopper sang amongst the rushes. Kalisa was surprised how tired she felt after walking just a short distance, as if the sunlight was weighing her down. She stopped carrying her bag on her shoulders, letting it swing back and forth from her hand so that it sometimes landed against her leg. The nerves she had about visiting Molly had been replaced with looking forward to getting the journey finished and hoping to have a big glass of lemonade upon arrival. Lemonade with ice that made condensation on the glass, making it appear as if the drink was sweating slightly. Kalisa pictured herself bringing the glass to her lips and taking a big drink, the mix of sharpness from the lemons, the sweetness of the sugar and the sensation of tiny bubbles rolling and popping against her mouth. She would keep drinking and the coolness of the lemonade would hit her stomach and spread across her shoulders, down to her fingertips. She focused on this ideal drink as she turned along a track that had split from the road. Briefly walking beneath the shelter of trees, Kalisa appreciated the slight coolness, making her more eager to reach her destination. A little further along the way were a few farm buildings. She was getting closer.

The farm was derelict, the outer buildings had ceilings you could see through and the old farmer’s cottage had been left to ruin. Kalisa looked across the empty farmyard, expecting to see a chicken perhaps, though all that remained was a rusted truck with weeds growing around it. The track continued and at the end were two more buildings. One was a barn, the other a long house that looked to have been built more recently. As Kalisa approached, she realised Molly hadn’t given much instruction besides an invite, an address and a time. First she walked to the barn. It had been modified, with a huge door making up most of the wall facing her. There was a smaller door just to the side, though this was sealed with a padlock. From a distance it had appeared as a barn, but now that she was closer Kalisa could see it had been modified, made for a different purpose than keeping animals. She wasn’t sure whether to knock on the door to the barn or go to the house, trapped between the two options by not wanting to make a bad first impression. Was this even the right place? Kalisa considered if she was trying to delay the meeting due to her nerves, whilst also not wanting to appear stupid for knocking on the wrong door. Whichever way, it was too hot to stand around outside all day. As her pulse quickened, Kalisa went to the house and knocked on the door.

“Hey! Where are you parked?” said Molly.

“I walked here from the station.”

“You should have said! I’d have come and picked you up. Feels warm out there. There’s a bathroom just down the hall if you want to freshen up.”

“I wouldn’t mind.” said Kalisa, feeling her clothes stick to her back. She felt foolish. In the bathroom she ran cold water on her wrists and washed her face in the sink. Her clothes would dry quickly in the heat, but she was worried that they’d smell sweaty. On top of a cabinet were an array of perfumes and sprays, though she didn’t feel as though she could use them. She dabbed herself dry with tissues and looked at her reflection. She looked okay. She looked good. It was important that she remembered she had been invited her for a reason, she was in the house of her hero, one of the greatest painters of the century and she had made it happen. After taking a big breath to steady herself, she went out into the hallway and followed the sounds coming from the kitchen.

 

Her eyes scanned the room. A log burner against a corner. A wooden table with a single chair. The only decoration she noticed were bouquets of dried flowers that crowded the tops of cupboards.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Do you have lemonade?”

“No. I have water. Probably too hot for a cup of tea, right? Too early for alcohol.”

“Water’s good.” Said Kalisa. It was unusual how informal it felt, banal even. The house had a certain musk to it, incense, smoke, varnish. Molly put some ice in a glass and filled it to the brim with tap water. Kalisa drank deeply.

“Thanks for coming at such short notice, you didn’t have any bank holiday plans?”

“No, no, thank you for the invitation.” Said Kalisa.

“I thought it’d be good to invite you here, see my studio, then we can have a chat if that sounds alright?”

“Absolutely.” Said Kalisa. The water arrived in her stomach and immediately started to cool her body, feeling like a wave travelling down her legs. Her eyes kept scanning around, trying to take everything in, hoping that there was something she could notice and make conversation about but nothing was jumping out at her.

“I like your flowers.”

“Oh yes.” Said Molly. She was wondering if inviting the girl had been a mistake. In her memory she pictured someone more driven, more daring, more alive, but the person who had arrived today seemed meek. Perhaps she was nervous. As Molly led the way back through the house and across to her studio, she reminded herself that nothing had been agreed yet. She would give her a tour of the studio and if she hadn’t shown much of a spark, would drive her back to the station. It would be easy. Did the girl know she was being interviewed? As soon as she had opened the door it had started. But of course Kalisa knew that it was an interview. Molly was the one who didn’t know that she was the one being interviewed.

 

They went into the studio. It was a converted barn, with the high ceiling stretching back to a wall of windows at the other end. A mezzanine split that part of the room in two, lit by a skylight overhead and looked to contain a bit of furniture. These architectural details weren’t the first thing that was obvious upon entering the room, as on every vertical surface a painting was hung. Hundreds of paintings, all crowded together, some layered over others like scales, others were in rows that rested between the corner of the wall and floor. All of this visual stimulus was a lot for Kalisa to take in. Landscapes, portraits, still-life studies, versions of famous paintings all rendered in oil paint, with the layers of varnish glittering slightly. Her eyes were unable to focus on any one thing, instead being drawn from one image to the other. The studio smelled heavily of linseed oil and turpentine, but also cigarette smoke, glue and eggs. Stepping across the floorboards splattered with paint, Molly led Kalisa to a series of shelves against a wall by a bench with a stone top.

“This is where I mix my paint. There’s nothing wrong with paint you’d find in an art shop, but there’s certain colours I want and can only get my mixing them myself. Have you ever made your own paint?” Molly said, pointing to the various things laid out on the desk.

 “Not yet. It looks interesting though. How do you make blue?” Kalisa said.

“Depends on the shade. Lapis Lazuli is the richest, both in terms of intensity and cost. There’s a number of synthetic pigments, derivatives using copper or cobalt. Prussian blue is made from iron and cyanide, so I don’t tend to use that much.” Molly said, unscrewing a jar and showing a powder the colour of sky. “This is azurite powder. Organic!”

“Ah.”

“Tell me, how would you make red?”

“Beetroot?”

“Yes, very good. It is common enough that you can easily made red by going down to the supermarket. Do you know what is mixed with pigment to make oil paint?”

“Linseed oil.” Kalisa said, already taking note of the large drums of linseed oil behind her.

“Yes, yes, exactly! Here I was thinking mixing paint was being forgotten and here you are. Did they teach you that at university?”

“Not too much, its more theoretical.”

“No change there then. It is a shame that we are losing these techniques. In themselves they are artforms. To know how much to crush the stones, the right consistency, mixing your own paint. It would be like asking a chef to cook for somebody and simply handing over a ready-meal. I mix my own paint, stretch my own canvasses, only thing I don’t tend to bother with is the framing.”

“It sounds like a lot of work.”

“Yes! Good work. Anyway, you didn’t come here to look at where I grind my pigments. Lets go upstairs and have a natter.” Molly said, darting up a wrought-iron spiral staircase to the mezzanine.

 

There was a small kitchen area off to one side, with a rocking chair resting nearby. A rug with so many stains it was hard to tell what colour it had been originally. There was a futon facing the windows, beyond that were fields that lay at the foot of hills surrounding where Molly lived.

“Do you mind if I smoke? Do you want one?”

“No, I’m fine thanks.”

“I like to sit here and look out of those windows, I see all the seasons change.” Molly said, lighting a cigarette. On a coffee table was a big crystal ashtray, conspicuously clean.

“Nature is a good teacher.” Kalisa said. Molly laughed.

“You’re right. Anything you want to know about art is through that window. I noticed you didn’t bring a portfolio.”

“Was I supposed to?” Kalisa said.

“I remember you approached me the other week and requested I teach you. I’m not saying I will, but I thought we could have a little talk, you can see my work, maybe I could see your work.”

“I have pictures on my phone.”

“No, I don’t like any of that. It loses all the impact of the original. You have people walking around galleries taking pictures of everything and not seeing any art.”

“I can do a drawing now if you like. I can draw anything.”

“Yes, yes, the hands, I was very impressed. You just drew that on the spot?”

“Yes.” Kalisa said. She felt as though the question was pointed, as if Molly was accusing her of something. The initial glow of meeting her was beginning to wear off, now she was finding the conversation to have an odd rhythm to it.

“Very good. I think there’s some paper up here, would you humour me?”

“What would you like me to draw?”

“How about the view?” said Molly, gesturing with a little toss of the head. Kalisa looked out of the window, her eyes flowing over the line of the horizon, the wind-swept trees, the dry-stone walls, the clumps of grass. After a moment she then set to work.

 

Molly watched as she drew, wanting to tut. She wasn’t looking. She’d taken one look and was just sat drawing away. If there was one bit of wisdom she would impart on Kalisa, it was that an artist is always observing. It didn’t matter what the subject or style was, the artist must always refer back to the subject. It was through the rigorous act of looking and replicating those shapes, again and again over the course of decades, that they became second-nature. Looking was a foundational skill. Molly looked over her shoulder at the view again, something that she constantly discovered new things about as she would sit, noticing minor changes in the environment or perhaps studying a bird that was visiting. Just thinking of such things was getting her in the mood to draw the view herself.

“Done.” Kalisa said, flipping the drawing round. Molly looked and smiled, and the smile started to fade as she started to analyse the drawing. In less than a minute she had very accurately illustrated the scene, with delicate shading subduing the background so that the nearby shrubs seemed sharper and somehow looking separate from the page. It was marvellous.

“Good. Tell me about your process.”

“I just do a drawing.”

“Was it the grid from the windows? Did you use that to measure?”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. I can just see something and draw it, you know?”

“Yes, very talented. What’s your painting like?”

“Its okay. That’s why I’m here though, I’ve always been a big fan of your work, so when I saw you were speaking at the university I thought that it would be a good chance to talk to you. Maybe you can teach me?”

“Anyone can teach you painting. You can watch videos and someone will show you how to paint. Why ask me?” Molly said. Kalisa traced a finger across her drawing and thought for a moment.

“I think it’d be interesting.”

“Interesting. Yes.” Molly said, looking between the drawing and Kalisa. She took a deep drag from her cigarette.

“I can’t pay you or anything. Maybe I can help make pigment or sweep up?”

“My dear assistant usually does that, though currently she is unavailable. What year did you say you were in at university?”

“Just finishing my second.”

“Ah. Well, I suggest you finish your studies first. I wouldn’t want to interfere with whatever they are teaching you. Perhaps you can come back in a year’s time.”

“I’m free all summer. And I can help out in the studio.” Kalisa said carefully. Molly tilted her head back slightly, looking out of the skylight as she thought.

“What kind of artist do you want to be?” Molly said.

“I want to make the work I want. If I can make a living from it, all the better.”

“Spoken like a true artist. I am quite busy, I have work to make myself, future shows to plan, that sort of thing. I could use a second pair of hands and in return, I will teach you what I can. You have to understand, I am no teacher, in fact I hate them, but I will impart bits of what I know so that they don’t die out with me.” Molly said. Kalisa grinned, bouncing slightly where she sat.

“Really?”

“Yes. Temporarily! Just this summer.”

“Oh thank you, thank you, you don’t know what this means to me.” Kalisa said, surprised to find a tear welling up in one eye.

“Wait! Let me think for a moment. You should finish the rest of your studies before summer, I need to do some sorting out. At any moment I reserve the right to finish our business, as do you. I’ll teach you how to paint and you can help me work. I’d rather you don’t go round telling everybody I’m teaching you either, I won’t hear the end of it.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“No, do tell people where you are. Are you mad? I could be an axe murderer. Tell your family.”

“What else?”

“Next time you come, bring your work, I want to see it. You can come here on Monday through to Thursday. Are we agreed?”

“Yes.” Kalisa said, standing and offering a hand. Molly got up and shook it, smiling at the strange formality of the gesture. Molly’s thoughts danced between excitement and uncertainty, already wondering if she would regret this decision. The look on Kalisa’s face, such joy, was a giddy kind of innocence. The older painter wondered if she was still capable of expressing such a thing.

“I’m glad you’re happy. I have a few errands to run now, can I drive you back to the station?”

 

The car was ridiculously warm as it traversed the winding road Kalisa had walked along before. Neither felt like speaking, so Molly turned the radio on. Triumphant classical music filtered through, sometimes caught in a buzz of static as they passed beneath trees.

“See you in a month or so. I’ll call you.” Molly said as she dropped her off.

“I look forward to it. Have a good rest of the bank holiday.” Kalisa said. They bid each other goodbye and Kalisa watched the car leave, feeling slightly dreamy. Once the car turned a corner she started dancing on the spot and pumping her fists.

“Yes, yes, yes!”

 

Chapter 4

 

She went to church and prayed. She practiced painting. Most of her lectures had finished and so she spent a couple of weeks writing an essay in her garden. Sometimes her housemates joined her, sitting in the early afternoon sun and passing time. Dandelions had sprouted all over the lawn and one day Kalisa collected the heads and tried to make a paint out of them, crushing them up and adding some vegetable oil, ending up with a runny pale mess that wasn’t worth painting with. Sometimes she sketched the view from Molly’s studio window, or reorganised her portfolio again. The end of her second year couldn’t come quick enough.

On the day of the essay deadline, some of the other students had arranged to meet at a pub near the university. Students arrived in dribs and drabs, more than a few had been awake throughout the night with the aid of chemicals. Kalisa sat at a long bench by a side door, the draught through the pub created a cooling breeze. The other students laughed and talked about summer plans, conversations dividing and multiplying through the early afternoon. As people began to break away Kalisa made her move, beginning to nod off on the bus home. She flicked through her portfolio again as her housemates sat in the garden below, bits of sentences floated through the open window with the drone of lawnmowers. After a while Kalisa felt she wasn’t getting anywhere and fell asleep in her chair by the window.

Molly was cleaning up her studio, though kept having to stop due to the heat. It had rained the day before, making everything more humid and the perfect atmosphere for tiny flies and gnats to appear. She liked to keep her workspace tidy, but was going to extra lengths before Kalisa would arrive the following week. Henry the Hoover smiled cluelessly as his eyes seemed to follow her around the mezzanine.

“Will you fuck off?” she called down to it. None of the windows opened in her studio, she had initially thought it a wise security measure but was now seeing it as the main cause of her overheating. There was a big ventilation unit running through the studio to remove the vapours of the various chemicals she used, but served little good for keeping the room cool. The last few years had relatively cold summers, so the early heatwave that Spring was welcomed at first until the weeks wore on. It was forecast to be one of the hottest summers the UK had ever had. Molly thought about getting some air conditioning fitted but hated the idea of the noise, as well as the disruption fitting it. She rifled through the mess she had created tidying up until finally finding her ancient laptop, looking at alternative ways to stay cool. She tried to watch a video, skipping through minutes of introducing the idea before being forced to watch an advert, followed by the person presenting the video also promoting some product she had never heard of. With a big sigh she slapped the laptop closed, though with the clasp still broken the promotion continued, the American presenter delivering a product pitch to a series of upside-down letters. She tried to press the laptop close and that seemed to work, and she tossed it aside before lying down on the futon in ennui.

She wondered to herself, as she now did often, of her new student. Was there a way she could get out of it somehow? Perhaps she could go on holiday; New York, Barcelona, Florence. Perhaps it would be good for her. Her assistant would be gone until October, there would be nobody else around. She could pass on what she knew to the next generation. In itself she thought this was a good thing, but wondered why she had decided to agree to Kalisa after the hundreds of others had been denied before her. Was it her skill in drawing? Was it Molly’s own intuition? What if this girl was boring or annoying? What if she said Molly had done something awful and she had the press at her door? What if she took a picture of Molly secretly and put it on the internet? All of these questions with no answers went round and round in her head, usually ending with a big flurry of shaking her hands and feet to get rid of the anxious energy and clear her head. It would be fine. She might enjoy it! For every potential bad outcome, a good outcome was just as likely. It was easy for her mind to focus on the former as that was a way she could protect herself, by thinking through it and how she would react, as ultimately she felt vulnerable to let a stranger so close to her so quickly. Nothing bad would happen, she had to remind herself. She had asked a few of her friends for advice and though they seemed surprised and sceptical initially, they quickly came around to congratulating Molly on teaching somebody and having extra help in her studio. She lit a cigarette and looked at the hills beyond her window, remembering Kalisa’s drawing. It had been decided. It was too late to cancel. This was something that was going to happen and so she may as well enjoy it.

Kalisa watched the city give way to the country from the train window. The hard grey lines of industrial estates and pebble-dashed houses faded to rolling hills and full trees, lambs sleeping in the sun, rural roads lined with hedges. Her portfolio was next to her at an awkward angle, walling her off from the other passengers. It had been bought a few years ago in preparation for her university interviews, carrying it to St. Martins and Goldsmiths, as well as making the trip up north to Manchester. She opted for an A0 one, as big as 16 sheets of paper, which made it difficult to carry. Even the smallest breeze made it act like a sail, twisting Kalisa round or pulling her across the pavement. She thought back to her interviews at each university, a professor looking over the paintings she had done in her college course and making comments of her work that seared into her memory.

The train came to a stop and Kalisa got off, struggling with the huge portfolio that still somehow caught in the breeze even though it felt still. Molly was waiting in the car park this time, they drove the short distance to her studio.

“Right then, lets have a look at your work.” Molly said. The portfolio was unzipped and rotated, the younger artist watching the older one’s reaction to the pieces.

Compiling a portfolio is difficult. From all the work an artist creates, only a small sliver will end up going into the portfolio. It is best to start off with your strongest piece, something that shows the kind of artist you are, or perceive yourself to be. It may demonstrate your technical ability, your style or whichever subject you are most interested in. The following pages, with work trapped between plastic, would then continue telling your story as an artist. Some opt for showing progress in their work and aptitude for progression, with early studies of bowls of fruit in oil pastels giving way to more elaborate paintings. Others show a range of different skills, perhaps one page would be a portrait and the next some abstract piece covered in drips of ink and splotches of paint. These are not strong choices to put into a portfolio. The portfolio should have a kind of narrative to it, but this should represent a fully developed artist than a student still picking up foundational skills. It is better to show mastery of one or two skills than the versatility of many. Some artists are particularly interested in showing large cityscapes, others the human figure, others interested in lighting. Displaying different mediums, like charcoal studies or paintings in watercolour, serve well to show some versatility, but ultimately the portfolio serves the same as an exhibition. An artist would do well to show how each piece is connected than proving they have the capacity to learn. The final page of the portfolio should ideally be a piece of art done recently, equally as strong as the first page, as the beginning and end of anything tends to be more memorable than what happened in between.

Kalisa’s portfolio consisted of 24 illustrations and paintings. What she had shown in her interviews for university had been taken out years ago and now rested under her bed, to be replaced with the work she had been doing at university. The focus of her work was the human figure, often displaying a few people in each piece interacting with each other. It became clear that there were religious elements in each work, with Christian iconography running throughout.

“Are you one of those New Christians?”

“New Catholics? No.” Kalisa laughed. “I’m a real Christian.”

“I see.” Molly said, turning a page. There was a large charcoal study of a man from behind, the curvature of his spine and ribs taking up most of the page. Atop his head was a halo that emanated light. The next page was a painting of Jesus, and like the other figures in the portfolio, was black. Kalisa looked at Molly to see if she reacted, as some people took offence at the idea that people born two thousand years ago around North Africa and the Middle East might have had dark skin, but Molly didn’t mention it. She continued to turn the pages, look at the work, until landing on the final page, a snake descending from a tree whilst Eve was about to take a bite from an apple.

“What do you think?”

“You are skilled at illustrating, but your painting needs some work. Look at this, the figures don’t seem to be within the scene, almost as if they have been cut out and stuck on. And here, this is poor colour mixing. You can see the flecks of blue in amongst the green. Who taught you to paint?”

“I watched some videos online.” Kalisa said, her face burning slightly. Molly clicked her tongue against her teeth.

“You study painting at university, yes?”

“They don’t teach us how to paint, its just theory. Postmodernism, that sort of thing.”

“Yes, I remember how it was. You’ve been painting a while though.”

“I used to use this drawing tablet on my computer but it broke.”

“No, no, don’t do that. You have to use paint to be a painter!”

“Will you teach me then?”

“I liked your drawing, but that is a different skill to painting. Mixing colour, moving the paint around, building layers, these are all essential skills. I will show you what I know but I can’t promise anything.”

“Where do we start?”

“We will learn by doing, just as I was taught.”

“Who taught you?”

“That is a long story, perhaps I’ll tell you another time. For now, let us paint.” Molly said. With that, the portfolio was zipped back up and the two artists started their first lesson.

 

Molly opened a metal cabinet and brought out a doll. It was just a bit bigger than her, made of foam and hessian.

“I had the armature built by a friend. It has articulated joints, fully poseable.” Said Molly, rearranging the dolls limbs so that it stood up.

“I prefer to draw from life, but the doll is always here. Can you see?” she said, looking over to Kalisa.

 

And that is where the story ended. I wanted to write a book about two artists, one being older, famous and the other just starting her career. I was interested in writing a book that was quite summery and cosy and explore the relationships between these two people, connected by art, but also looking at identity, like race, class and gender.

I got talking about the story with someone and they weren't impressed that I was writing a story from the perspective of a black woman (and a white woman), but I felt like an author should be able to write about such things, as in, any thing, as that is imagination. I had done research and seen these dynamics in my work, and I had a purpose for writing this particular story.

It made me think about authorship though, so much so that I abandoned the project. I felt a bit self conscious after discussing the book with someone else. Am I only meant to write stories about my own lived experience? I would like to have a diversity of characters in my stories as that reflects the diversity of people in my life. I think anyone can write about anything so long as they do it with care, otherwise in the future there will be no fiction, just autobiography. However, the book is abandoned as I have become too conscious of myself as an author writing a story rather than just writing.

I liked some parts of what I had written so put it here, why not. The rest of the story would have been about learning the fundamentals of art, both the technical ability and theory. The women would spend the summer together, making art all day and talking all night. There was going to be a section that flashes back where the older character travels to Italy to be trained by an old master. The characters would have a disagreement and part ways. The years would pass and the student is now successful and popular whilst the teacher has become reclusive and no longer makes art. They would meet a final time in a restaurant, talking about their lives and different positions, as well as what art can be. I wanted the main themes of the story to be about learning, art and relationship, how there can be a tension between the individual and a collective. 

Maybe somebody else can write that story, I'll stick to my hard journalism and the actual true stories that shock the nation. In another world I have switched to writing bestselling books, but in this one I stand beneath the void of infinity, catching lightning in my jaw.