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The thought bursts in unbidden. So do memories of kindergarten, where I’d be slopping about with paints for hours, fixated by the splatter of hue on hue. Getting cussed at for not taking it seriously, when I was taking it far more seriously than any other child in the room.
It wasn’t playtime to me. It was life.
“You’re not feeling this one, are you?” Jack asks me, snapping me back to the present.
He’s still examining the light green alien entity on the easel. I’ve got a fresh round of yellow to greet her with tomorrow.
“I love her,” I say. “She’s just…” I feel like such an idiot referring to the thing like a sentient being, but Jack doesn’t have any joker energy about him. “We haven’t really found each other yet, you know? That connection point?”
“No,” he says. “I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever held a paintbrush in my life.”
I step up to him.
“How do you know that I’m not feeling her?”
“These bits.” He points to wisps of brush strokes at the top of the canvas. “Seems like you were poking around instead of in the zone.”
For someone who has never held a paintbrush, he’s got a pretty good eye for it.
Bryce puts down the purple princess in the corner and joins us at the easel.
“I think it’s absolutely fantastic,” he says, and his smile is so him it makes my stomach lurch. “It’s bloody marvellous. I can feel the energy all set to burst free. It’s just brewing. Stirring.”
“Credit to you, BT,” Jack says. “And so do I, but it’s not got the same energy as some of the others.” He clicks his fingers. “I dunno what the official art speak is for it. The flow? The zone? What’s that trancelike state where you’re nothing but the vessel as the energy takes over?”
I nod. “I call it the flow, yeah. Where there’s nothing else but me and the canvas. Focused, trancelike, where nothing else exists.”
“No ego, no self-consciousness.” Bryce is smiling. “I love the way artists talk about it. It sounds so unbelievably free. And I can see it, feel it emanating from the canvases in here.”
He looks back over at the purple piece that consumed me for days. I slept on the floor in here with a paintbrush still in my hand.
Bryce was one of the first people who ever saw my art in this kind of form. Everyone else shunned it as a stupid pastime and assumed I’d grow up and out of it, but I wouldn’t want to in a million lifetimes.
His warm eyes dig into the depths, and it’s like old times. He’s remembering the same moments I am, I can see it. Hear his brain whirring. Him sitting with me in my first studio at Mum and Dad’s place, watching me as I worked. No opinions, no small talk. Nothing but sitting in on my energy as it burst through my fingers.
We’d talk about art around it. He’d look through other artists’ work with me and watch tutorials. Once, he even considered giving it a go.
“You should have picked the brush up,” I say, knowing full well he’ll be right with me on the memories.
Another smile lights up his eyes. “Good job I didn’t. Who knows what would have happened if I did? I might have found myself an addict, and I’d be terrible. Godawful.”
Jack turns to face him.
“Why would you be terrible? Don’t get me wrong, I know art is all highbrow and nuanced and on other levels and all that jazz, but you’re more than capable of slapping some paint on a canvas. You might have been the next Van Gogh for all you know.”
Bryce laughs. “The fates had other plans. I certainly know that much.”
“Or maybe other people did.”
My heart drops. I don’t want to delve into psychoanalysis in this space. It might send Bryce running for real. I stiffen up, eyes widening.
“Jesus Christ,” Jack continues, and looks at me. “Lighten up, you two. Can you offer the poor guy some art therapy, Alice? It’s a paintbrush, not a sniper rifle.”
“Of course I can.” I turn my attention to Bryce. “The offer is still open. You can have a go.”
The idea of Bryce painting is weirdly exciting. I offered him a canvas loads of times when we were younger, but he wouldn’t take it. Not after that tipping point where he almost succumbed and took the brush in his hand to lay some edgework down on one of mine. Once his road was mapped out with Dad, that was that. Door closed.
Fuck it. It’s worth pushing. It would be so much fun.
