Understanding an Artist

I haven't been putting this off, I promise. I actually only write these blogs when I'm at work and I've been really busy. I got my inspiration to write something depressing about four nights ago and I planned to get it out there the very next day, but this is the first chance I've had log on in since the idea came to me. Then I had planned to write it and post it last night, but my best friend broke up with his skank-ass girlfriend who had been whoring her way around Council Bluffs and we all went out to celebrate the fact that she is gone. Yay! So finally, I pass my depressing story on to you:

She could remember when she first sat down in front of this canvas. She had brought it home wedged into her '88 Mercury Tracer hatchback, which meant she had hunched over the wheel just to fit in her car with the canvas at the same time. Thankfully, Blick's was close to home and she didn't have to drive very far. She didn't stretch her own canvases and she was sure other artists scoffed at the fact that she had pre-made canvases purchased from a store. For shame! She didn't blend her own oils either. Gasp! She didn't really care about the dynamics of paint blending or canvas stretching. She wasn't under the impression that doing these things would make her a better painter or give her a better understanding her own work, so why do it? She was here to paint the damn thing not break a sweat on the pre-work. She also didn't like to dilute the thick paint as so many artist do just to make it last longer. That's the last straw! You don't know what it means to be a real artist! She didn't care what other people thought of her work. She had always done it to please herself, not others. The fact that her work actually sold in the last show was just a delightful bonus as far as she was concerned.

She had turned what was supposed to be a dinning room into her art studio when she had first moved into this apartment. She blocked the doorway to the kitchen with a Chinese screen that was now splattered with a variety of color. She had drop cloths covering the floor so she didn't have to pay for new carpet when she moved out and that had been enough protection until she had bought this canvas. It was the biggest one she had ever tried to use so she didn't have an easel large enough to hold it. Instead, she had pinned another drop cloth to the back wall and just leaned the canvas right against it and hoped for the best. She had been so excited to start this canvas. It was the start of a whole new direction to her art. No longer would she have dark depressing pieces that sometimes scared the people who visited the gallery. Everything had been a little brighter in her life that day. She had just discovered that she was going to have a baby with her boyfriend that she had been with for just over a year and he had nearly leaped out of his skin with joy when she had told him. She had celebrated by buying the biggest canvas the store had in stock.

That seemed like ages ago, now. Now, she stared at the half finished canvas with contempt. A streamer of purple and blue wound its way across the center of the six foot canvas. The two colors blurred together towards the right side and tapered off right before it went off the edge. The cerulean blue was his favorite color. Half the damn apartment was blue because of him. She had always leaned more towards the dark rich purple that at one time was only associated with nobility. The colors blended together reminding her of the sky at dusk when the weather was just right. She had been very proud of the way that ribbon of color had turned out. Above this split, a faceless child had begun to form out of the wild and chaotic streaks of paint. Nothing but the best colors had been used and as the reds, oranges and yellows blurred together the form had become clear to her that it was her child. Her, currently faceless and sexless, child was the most perfect thing she had created with oils on canvas since she had decided to become an artist. The painting had been frozen in this state for a month and a half. That's when everything had started or, more accurately, that when everything had unraveled on her.

It has only been a month and a half.

Methodically she began to squeeze the thick paint onto her palate and prepared to continue what she had started before..... before a month and a half ago happened. Her hands trembled slightly and tightened over the tube she was holding. The fiery red blob tripled in size and melted into the smaller brown blob that was already on the palate. She released the, now almost empty, tube onto her supply table and inhaled sharply. The two colors melding together reminding her too much of blood. She took a step back away from the table and looked back at the painting again. Then she looked down and squeezed her eyes shut against the horrible truth that the picture she had begun painting months ago was a lie. That child doesn't exist. It's a lie. "Oh, God," she whispered to herself as the memories invaded her head again.

She had been painting when it had started. A sharp stab starting in her lower back and twisting through to her lower abdomen. The pain had ripped through her which made her scream a moment before dropping to a squatting position in front of her painting. Blood, that looked like her oil paints, was pooling on the drop cloth at her feet. She had screamed again.... his name. And he hadn't responded. The pain wasn't constant though, so she managed to crawl away from her work and down the narrow hallway to the bedroom. There was a stream of blood trailing her down the hall -- the pain tore across her abdomen and down her legs. She fell forward desperately grasping at the smooth wall and leaving only a smear of paint behind. He's gonna be pissed about that. She thought stupidly. She made it to the bedroom and saw him sprawled half on the bed and half off the bed. He was awake, but obviously very high. Fucking Heroine..... I'm going to die, because he got fucked up.

The tears had stung her again and she looked up determined not to think about it right now. She had work to do. She pushed the tears away which took a few swipes of her hand since quite a few of them had managed to sneak out of her eyes before she had been able to stop them. She brushed her hands against her jeans and went back to the prep table. She found her darker colors that she had originally intended to never use on this piece. Now, they were the only appropriate colors to use. This painting was going to be the final piece in her upcoming show. Her manager had insisted that it could wait until she was feeling better. She told her she was feeling fine and then hung up. Like she really gives a fuck how I feel. This painting would fit right in with her other pieces after today. Her critics once called her work grotesque..... that was before her successful show. She had sold almost every piece in the show and then words like grotesque and disturbing became Gothic and uniquely dark. It was all a joke to her. After she had that success she had stopped looking at reviews all together. She stood back from her painting for a moment to observe what she had just done to it. There were now spiky flames below her beautiful ribbon of cerulean blue and royal purple. She had blackened the bottom of the stream of color to suggest that it was smouldering and about to burst into flames at any given moment. The picture is becoming less of a lie now, but it's still not finished.

Get up! The scream tore through her mind as though she had just screamed it a moment ago instead of a month and a half ago. He had managed to raise his head to look at her. Somewhere is his clouded mind he saw the blood that had chased her all the way down the hall. "Is that paint?" he had slurred. How much did you take you useless piece of shit? She didn't bother saying it aloud. He wouldn't have really heard her anyway. "No, I need to get to the hospital, now!" She tired to convey urgency in her tone because screaming at him to get with the program wasn't going to cut it. This was a real emergency. "I can't drive, though," he replied staring at her blankly as though she was the one being unreasonable. She snapped at that point, "This is not a joke, you fucking loser! I'm bleeding and the baby is going to DIE!" Realization slipped in through the fog and his eyes widened slightly. The pain took that moment to cut through her body again and fresh blood flowed hot against her legs. Damn it.

She shook the thoughts from her mind again. She had to finish this so she could never think about it again. The painting was lacking something. She needed it to speak the truth, but she didn't want to see her baby disappear. She wanted to hold on to the picture and the hope.... even if there really was no hope left to hang on to. She had been taken to the hospital unconscious. She assumed the blood loss had made her pass out. And she had been in the hospital for weeks as they tried to stabilize her. They had hooked her up to dozens of machines and had done numerous test.... things she couldn't even pronounce and didn't know what purpose they served. All the nurses and doctors that had whisked through her room always had reassuring things to say to her. Nothing definite like "you and your baby are going to be fine." No, they couldn't say anything that could possible come back to bite them in the ass. All those machines and all those tests and her baby had still died. She had been forced to give birth to her dead fetus. They had kept calling it that. As though calling it something other than a baby made it less of a person. My baby. No longer. She had demanded to see and hold her baby before they took it off.... before they rid themselves of it, however they do that. They had all given each other worried glances as though she were insane for wanting to say goodbye to her baby forever. So small. It almost didn't look human, but it was and it was hers.

She was crying again. And this time she didn't try to stop the hot river flowing down her pale cheeks. She had a right to mourn her child especially now, faced with the truth staring back at her. She screamed at the painting -- an inhumane sound that only humans can make when they are in the most excruciating pain. The pain that drives people to do insane things. The pain left her and all she felt was cold. A cold that invaded every cell in her body. A cold that could not be rushed away with a hot shower or cranking the heat up. The cold seeped into a place that should never be cold. A place that threatened to never be warm again if she wasn't able to shake it away.

And then there was him. He had remained clean while she was in the hospital. Too frightened of what had happened the last time he had gotten fucked up. He blamed himself and she didn't contradict him. Not because she honestly believed it was his fault that the baby had been lost, but because she didn't want to deal with his self-absorbed pity party. He hadn't felt the lifeless being pulled from his body like it was nothing more than a parasite. Sure he had felt the loss of his child, but why on Earth did he feel the need to whine to her? There was no possible way he had felt the pain as acutely as she had. The anger bubbled up inside of her. She had come back home, dropped off by her sister. She had refused to let her sister come inside even though she had nearly begged. No, she had needed to be alone to wallow in her misery for a while longer all by herself. What she had gotten instead was more death.

When she pushed the door to the bedroom open she could smell something off. He was there sprawled half on the bed and half off the bed. His eyes were open and his lips had a disgusting purplish blue tint to them. He wasn't breathing. She hadn't screamed or cried. She had no tears left for him. She had used them all up on her beloved baby. You selfish bastard. Was all she could think when she saw him. She had left the apartment and gone back down to where her sister was still sitting, crying and waiting for her sister to do something crazy... what? like overdose on heroine because I'm a pathetic loser? Not my style, honey. Her sister had seemed shocked to see her standing on the sidewalk watching her cry. She had quickly regained control and gotten out of the car to see what had happened. Call the police. She needed to call the police.

She had called. The operator had obviously been slightly disturbed by her calm matter-of-fact tone as she explained that her boyfriend was dead in their apartment bedroom because he had overdosed on heroin. What, in God's name, had I ever seen in him? That had been two weeks ago.

That selfish turd left me to deal with this all by myself! The anger flowed freely through her veins and as she contemplated what to do next with her final project something exploded within her. She hurled the palate at the canvas. The abundance of red splattered across her baby, the ribbon of purple and blue and dripped down into the flames. "I hate you!" She screamed at no one and everything all at the same time. She took two steps back and collapsed.

Hours later her manager let herself into the small dark apartment and called out quietly to see if her client was painting or sleeping or if she was able to come in to look at the final piece. Her client had been erratic the past month with every right and she tried to walk on eggshells for her. She poked around for a few minutes, but finally determined that it was okay to go in the studio to check out the last painting of this collection. She gasped when she saw the final results of the artists efforts. It was gruesome and by far the most disturbing piece to come out of this particular artist. She loved it. It was raw and very emotional and it gave hope to the agent that this poor artist had a heart after all. She remained in the apartment for another hour waiting for the artist to return. When there was still no sign of her the agent left making a note in her planner to call and set up a date and time to move the last piece and get it hung in the gallery.

But the artist had left. She wasn't going to return and she didn't care what happened to that last peice.

Well, I hope this is good for my first blog story. I didn't really do much in the way of editing. I'm just leaving it how it is and I'm hoping for the best. Enjoy.