The best kind of painter. The old man that sat on the street and covered his canvas whenever anyone walked by. The kind that still had sandy hair when he was sixty with a shortish beard to match. The kind that forgot to smile until you reminded him. But he'd laugh anytime you told a joke, even if you both knew it was awful, and he had a hug for anyone that needed it.
He'd go out to the bars. The barkeeps all knew his name, and they smiled when he came in, gave him his usual, and forgot about him. He'd make friends for the evening, swear he'd keep in touch, then go home alone. He had another canvas for when he was drunk, and he always insisted that he painted better when the world was blurry, and the sober grey of the daytime markets didn't fog his mind. He didn't show the drunk canvas to anyone either, but he seemed happier with the results than the day canvas.
His night brushes were smashed, twisted, and snapped. His day brushes were pristine, ordered by size in a tiny box attached to the leg of his easel. I don't know for sure, but I would say that both sets of brushes loved him equally, if they could love at all.
He was hungover in the mornings, and he could barely bring himself to paint at all. He hadn't seen a sunrise in twenty years without cursing at it. He was usually too far down a bottle to see the sunsets.
The day after the accident was the first time I saw his canvases. He stacked them tall in his closet, in his spare bedroom. He started stacking them in the bathroom towards the end.
It didn't matter where he put them because, Christ, that man was a genius.
His day canvases depicted anything and everything. Green, smeared landscapes. Mountains that kissed the clouds, and clouds that tumbled across the earth. Worlds aflame, skies athunder. Blackened voids. Brilliant stars. All painted with expert hands. I could sell them for a fortune, if I wanted.
I knew he kept his drunk canvases underneath the floorboards. I found them in an hour, after bending one of my nails and snapping a paintbrush I tried to wedge underneath the wood. I found the space at last. Only one canvas lay beneath.
There were rumors abound on what he painted those nights. His wife lost at sea, his sister lost to disease. The marketplace, or the charming barkeep Saturday nights. God, maybe. The King. Some fling of his in recent years, although everyone knew he hadn't taken a girl home for ages.
But painted over and over on the one canvas was the same image: an orange orb wavering before the bleak horizon. Pink flew in every direction like a cape. Deep yellows, soft reds. A soft suffusion, scalding spark.
To this day, I'm not sure whether he meant to paint the morning or the evening. End or beginning. Sunrise or sunset.
Nature is ambiguous that way.
 |
| http://rusticmeetsvintage.tumblr.com/post/25429194999/hans-blomquist-the-natural-home |
No comments:
Post a Comment