Memory and Dream

The studio had originally been a greenhouse, but the professor had converted it into studio space for the use of those gifted students who, for one reason or another, didn’t have any other facility in which to work. At the time that Izzy started going, Jilly was the only other artist using the place. Since it had its own outside door, they could work in there at any time of the day or night without disturbing the professor. Jilly was the one who had christened it the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio after the professor’s cranky manservant, Olaf Goonasekara, who would glower at them through the greenhouse windows whenever he happened to be passing by.

Money being at a premium for both herself and filly, they worked with very limited palettes and tended to share brushes and other equipment when they could, but even then it was tight. Still they managed, working in monochrome when they were down to their last tube of paint.

At first Izzy had thought she would find it too frustrating to create in such conditions. She’d been spoiled at Rushkin’s studio, where everything she could possibly need was provided for. But while the opposite held true in the green-house studio, Izzy discovered that those same limitations were very freeing in terms of her art. Most of the time she had to rely on her own wits to get the effects and colors she needed, and while she soon appreciated just how much she had learned from Rushkin to allow her art to flourish as it did in these limited working conditions, she also came to realize that the painting she did here was allowing her to step out from under the broad shadow that Rushkin cast upon her art.

In that sense, she found it to be a very empowering experience. Less successful was her attempt to use her art to bring otherworldly beings across from their world to her own.

She finished the third of her paintings in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. They were all three portraits of beings that were partly of this world, but partly of some other: a strange gaunt scarecrow figure with twigs and vines and leaves for hair. A tiny woman that seemed to be a cross between one of the bohemians from Waterhouse Street and a ladybug. An alley cat with wings and a tail like a rattlesnake’s body, complete with the rattle at the end. Not one of the strange beings followed the laws of nature as laid out by Darwin. And not one of them manifested itself beyond its two-dimensional existence on her easel.

And that was because such creatures were impossible, she thought as she sat on the edge of one of the long tables in the greenhouse that had originally bent under the weight of the professor’s potted plants and flowers. She looked at her odd cat, crouching on a fire escape as though it was about to take flight, then let her gaze drift away from the easel to the professor’s backyard. It was snowing again, big lazy flakes that glistened in the light spilling from the professor’s house and the greenhouse studio.

Hopping off the table, she collected the other two paintings and stood them up on the easel beside that of the winged cat. There was just enough room for all three of them on the long piece of wood that served as the lower canvas holder.

She’d done other pieces here—monochromatic studies and various sketches—but these three were the only completed works to date. She knew she was biased, but she believed they had spirit. She was sure that they had as much heart as did her Smither’s Oak or The Spirit Is Strong, but they weren’t going to come alive because their subjects didn’t exist, except in her head. There was no bringing them across from some otherworld with her art because there was no otherworld, the creatures didn’t exist, and neither did the magic that was supposed to bring them over.

How could she have been so stupid as to think it could be otherwise?

Because she wanted to, she realized. It was partly because she wanted to believe that magic could exist in the world. But it was also because she didn’t want to believe that Rushkin had been lying to her.

It was disheartening to realize that for all his artistic talent, he really was quite mad.

She smiled. Maybe it was because of his artistic talent that he was mad.

After a while, she put her paintings away and cleaned up. She paused at the door, looking back before she turned off the light. The experiment had been a failure in some ways, but at least it had reminded her that she did have her own individual talent. It wasn’t all borrowed from working in Rushkin’s shadow. And one thing she knew. She wasn’t going to give it up. So long as the professor let her work here, she was going to share the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio space with Jilly and continue to stretch her own artistic muscles, free from Rushkin’s influence, for she’d come to understand over the past few weeks that she couldn’t do otherwise and still consider herself her own woman. And besides, the hours she spent here seemed to be the only time she ever felt any real peace. The only coin she had to pay in was lost sleep.

She turned off the light and the studio plunged into darkness. Locking the door, she pocketed the key and then trudged off through the snow for home.

II

Newford, February 1975

The show at The Green Man Gallery didn’t do as well as Izzy had hoped. Of the fourteen paintings available for sale, only two sold. Both were street scenes of Lower Crowsea: competent, but indistinguishable from those painted by the many other artists who used the same locale as their own source of inspiration.

“You’re going to have to put your own stamp on your work” was how Albina summed it up.

Izzy gave her a glum nod. The two of them had retired to the back of the gallery to commiserate over a pot of tea after taking the show down. In the pocket of her black jeans Izzy had a check worth a grand total of a hundred and fortyfour dollars—her share of what the two paintings had sold for, minus the gallery’s cut. She did better at The Green Man, she realized, when she didn’t have her own show, when her paintings were just scattered here and there throughout the gallery, tossed in among the works of all the other artists that Albina represented.

“What you’re doing is lovely,” Albina went on. “It’s beautifully rendered, but it doesn’t tell me anything about you. The lack doesn’t show up so much when you only have one or two pieces hanging, but it becomes quite plain over a whole show. The viewer wants more from you, Izzy. They might not be able to articulate it, but they want a connection to you. They want to know what you feel about your subject and that’s simply not coming across with your work.”

“I’m getting the picture,” Izzy said.

The In the City review had said much the same thing. The city’s daily papers hadn’t even covered the show.

Albina smiled sympathetically. “But don’t be too discouraged. January’s not the best time for a show, what with everybody starting to realize just how much they spent over Christmas. Why don’t we think of doing another one in the fall?”

“You’d do that even though this one was such a disaster?”

“It wasn’t a complete disaster.”

Izzy pulled out her check. “No, we really had some big sales, didn’t we?”

“Actually, there were a couple of other offers,” Albina said. “I was just getting around to telling you about them.”

“There were? What do you mean, like commissions?”

Albina shook her head. “I’m talking about the two paintings that you wouldn’t sell. I’ve had inquiries on both—serious inquiries for The Spirit Is Strong.”

“What do you mean by serious?” Izzy asked.

“Someone’s offered us five thousand dollars for it.”

“You’re kidding. Who’d pay that kind of money for anything I’ve done?” Albina shrugged. “I’ve no idea. The offer was made through a lawyer. Apparently the buyer wants to remain anonymous.”

“Five thousand dollars,” Izzy repeated.

It was a phenomenal sum. The most one of her paintings had ever gone for to date was a tenth of that amount.

“If we accept the offer,” Albina said, “it’ll put you on a whole new plateau in terms of what you can ask for your work. The buyer might be anonymous, but word still gets around. If you can produce more works of a similar quality, I can guarantee that your next show will be far more successful.”

“And somebody wants to buy Smither’s Oak as well?”

Albina nodded. “I have an offer of seven hundred dollars in on it.”

“Another anonymous buyer?”

“No. Kathryn Pollack wants to buy it.”