Recent Posts

{The Artist}In his hands, the paintbrush remained as still as the absolute silence of his surroundings. Steadily, he turned it once to measure the width. He had measured things with paintbrushes since he was a child. John had always been fascinated by the straight lines, shadows, colors, contours, and dimensions, and had been even more enthralled by translating those elements into paper. Now grown up, he had took it upon himself the duty of distilling beauty from reality into a canvas so that it may be immortal.

The man set down his paintbrush, staring idly at the stark white canvas. It challenged him with its pure blank state, but his imagination could not oblige to stain it. This was the sort of helplessness every man of a trade hated to experience. Even under normal circumstances, inspiration did not come easily. Yet, when it did come to himn, it came in a form of a man: a tax collector.

Strain and anxiety creased his brow as he rubbed his temples. Only nothing short of the Mona Lisa could salvage him from this debt.

His muscles tensed when he heard the door fling open. John looked up to see the distraught face of his wife. However, he already knew that she did not come seeking for his console.

“John, do you realize that we are absolutely ruined?” she asked, red faced as she clenched the silks of her dress.

“Helen, you say that with pearls around your neck and a diamond on your finger,” John replied.

She placed a pale hand over her necklace, as if she was truly offended, and then clutched the pearls.

“John please, you need to paint something worth gold to pay off the taxes. Something beautiful,” Helen let out a breathless smile and walked towards him with soft steps. She spread the fabric of her skirt from side to side to reveal the highlights in the emerald sheen. “Do you like my dress, darling?”

“Yes, yes, it’s lovely,” John replied tersely, waving his hand dismissively. “Now go. Leave me. I need more time to think.”

Curling her lips, the woman straightened up. “The auction is going to be in a few weeks. And if it’s not your painting that gets the papers, it will be our entire bloody estate and everything in it!”

John didn’t even dare to look at the woman he called his wife, and he denied her the attention she so obviously wanted. Helen was a prudent woman, short of temper, and dull of wit; she would never be able to identify a problem unless it affected her jewels. The silence shared between them was disrupted by the sound of a scoff and heeled footsteps that disappeared behind the slam of a door. There was truly nothing left that loved him.

After a moment of silence, he stood up and began to pace around, the wooden floorboards sighing to his strides. John stared at a wooden artist’s mannequin, its wooden joints posed to silhouette a maiden looking out the window. In the actual commission he had finished months ago, he gave this wooden figurine a skin of porcelain, a hair of gold, and a beautifully adorned satin dress.

John pressed his head against the wall and shut his eyes. All they wanted was that kind of immaculate beauty. All they had ever expected was florid cheeks and little plum lips, big blue eyes of a lady, and a dress of the queens. Or even a broad shouldered man and his stallion, or maybe a soldier with a sword in his hand and a crest of his family’s seal on his chest.

This priggish elegance and refinery had made every piece of art look the same since the start of the century. If beauty in art is subjective, then why did it subject to conformity? He was sick of drawing by the guidelines of what society considered to be favorable.

The door opened again, and he whirled around to inspect the intruder. It was the household maid, a young Indian girl. Her name was Maliha, but it was so foreign to the tongue, that every English speaking person had addressed her as ‘girl’.

John hardly spoke to her, and was barely familiar with her, but he had heard of her through his wife’s mocking and complaints. To be honest, he had not once seen her step into the studio while he was in it; among daily tasks was to clean his studio while he was not working.

His glance at her was filled with indifference. She appeared stunned but did not move, her stranger’s inky black eyes staring at him with fealty and obedience. That look irked him, and so John reached out an arm at the mannequin.

“Clean it.”

She stared at him hollowly and took two timid steps.

“Clean it.” he repeated again, his tone frozen with impatience.

With a bucket in one hand and a towel in the other, the girl scurried over towards the spot where the sunlight teemed through the window. Her hand brushed the wooden figure once, reeled her hand away, and then meekly dabbed it with a moist towel. Those large eyed glanced at him, and when he caught it, she shuddered and looked away.

John watched her with mild interest. When she looked up again, he said, “Keep cleaning.”

As she scrubbed, he walked over to another angle, both hands behind his back. He examined the way the light bounced off her dark skin, her ebony hair, and large flat nose. She was, by no means, comely at all, but it was hard to pry his eyes from her. There was a certain mystique about her, and it was disturbing to him that he was enjoying it.

“Stay there,” John reached out a hand to signal her to stop. Petrified, she stood in place.

Slowly, he sat down on his stool before his canvas and then looked at the girl again. There was something rugged and different about the structure her face, the mystery warped in those eyes. Her eyebrows were not thin and ladylike at all, but somehow, it enhanced the emotion in her complexion. It made her look authentic.

“Chin up.” When she did not comply, he repeated again and raised his own chin, pointing at it. “Chin up, girl. Look up.”

Once she understood, she looked up immediately, her fingers fumbling with the moist towel.

“Don’t move,” John commanded as he picked up a brush. Then, he measured her with the paintbrush from his seat. After one exhale, he felt a bloom of energy from within chest.

“The clocks are ticking, girl. A stone needs to be thrown to cause ripples,” John said as he continued to sketch out her outline with charcoal. She looked at him mutely and blinked several times.

“You’re Indian and your kind does not understand art, I know this. England still sees your kind as cultureless immigrants, and you will never marry into high society, nor will your children or grandchildren.”

“But there may be a time, girl, when your face will bring pleasure to people who look at it. If not now, then through this, where you’ll…” John paused, chuckled a little bit and then continued, “where you’ll live forever.”

He turned his head slightly to get a better angle at his sketch. The subject of this painting was a gamble. If he could net popularity with this culture-cross in art, he would possibly be one of the most celebrated artists, like Da Vinci or Michael Angelo. If not, then he would forever be stripped of his canvas and belongings, to be thrown in the streets to die in anonymity.

And it shall not be, if his name wasn’t John W. Doe.

by anonymous