Page 12 of None Of Your Business

The canvas has been blank for forty-three days. I know because I’ve been counting.

For forty-three days, I’ve stood in front of it, mixing colors I won’t use, washing brushes, and moving around the room as if finding the right angle will magically make me paint something. It hasn’t. I step back and tilt my head left. Nothing. I tilt it right.

“Any time you’re ready,” I tell it.

The canvas remains unmoved by my encouragement.

Five minutes ago, I moved the easel closer to the windows. Yesterday, I turned the whole canvas around and worked from the back, reaching the stage of creative desperation where I believe art has a preferred orientation.

That didn’t work either.

My studio is a small, converted warehouse next to my house. Pete, my landlord—a retired electrician who communicates almost exclusively through nods—offered it to me when I moved in three years ago. He said it was just sitting there, that I could use it for whatever I wanted, and that the lighting was terrible.

He was wrong about the light. Two of the walls face east and catch the morning sun perfectly. When I strung extra lights along the beams for winter, Pete showed up halfway through with a ladder and rewired two of the fixtures without asking. That was the longest interaction we’ve ever had.

The smell of linseed oil and turpentine usually settles me the second I walk in. Today, it feels accusatory. You’re standing in a studio. Where’s the art?

There’s plenty of evidence that art should be happening. A commissioned piece leans against the far wall, half-finished. Another sits under a bedsheet because I got so sick of looking at it last week that covering it felt safer than setting it on fire. Then there are the canvases for the show. Far too many of them remain blank.

The show is three months away. Plenty of time. Artists build entire collections in three months. I could Google it to confirm, but that’s how I’d end up reading about some twenty-two-year-old in Berlin who painted thirty-seven pieces over a weekend. I don’t need that kind of negativity.

“Three months,” I say to the blank canvas. “You’re not worried?”

Apparently not. I am, though.

The gallery has been more patient with me than I deserve. They found me at a group show two years ago—six artists crammed into a converted industrial space downtown. One of the owners liked my work enough to follow up. A few meetings became representation. Representation became commissions. Then they offered me a solo show. My first.

I spent months preparing for it, and then… I canceled.

I don’t let myself dwell on that part. There’s no point. This time is different. I have three months, several completed pieces, two commissions to wrap up, and a functioning body.

Mostly functional.

I reach for the brush again. My left hip locks, a dull ache running down my thigh. I shift my weight to my right leg.

You’re limping again.

I’m not letting Hudson into my studio. He’s taken up far too much brain space since yesterday. His voice doesn’t get to live here, too.

“Damn head doctor,” I say to the empty room.

I force my weight back onto my left leg out of pure spite, then pick up my palette knife anyway, because doing nothing feels worse than doing something badly. I mix burnt sienna with raw umber and a little cadmium orange, working the paint in slow circles, waiting for the mental click that usually tells me what I need. But today, burnt sienna and raw umber just become brown.

Groundbreaking. Someone alert the gallery.

Giving up, I scrape the palette clean when my phone chimes on the workbench behind me. The screen is cracked, light bleeding through the glass.

Appointment with Dr. Elaine Mercer. 10:30 a.m. Don’t be late again.

“Shit.” I’m definitely going to be late again.

My house is twelve feet away. I make it nine feet before my hip catches. I breathe through the sharp pull and keep moving.

You’re limping again.

“Oh, go away, Hudson.”

My house is a mess. The second I walk in, I notice every chore I’ve neglected, but I don’t have time to deal with my failures as a homeowner when I’m already late for my failures as a patient.