Painting a Memoir

You start with a blank canvas.

There’s an idea that’s been brewing in your mind, coming together with the recent gratitude you have for life, certain people, and things that encourage your mind to grow. Tucked in your spare bedroom, which you christened your studio, is the array of colors and sheets taped to or leaned against the walls. There is only one window, but it lets an abundance of light that brightens the space substantially.

This master’s studio that you created from this slice of the world is a place of peace, stress, and glorious destruction. Your paints are the only thing neat in your room of beautiful chaos. Each bottle wiped clean after each use, a nicely printed label on their colorful bodies that you yourself stuck on.

Several colors–never too many–you lay them out beside the easel that was a gift from your mother, who indulges in the hobby you have adopted. Twisting and turning, setting the lids of the paint bottles neatly behind them in a line. Some order is always essential.

Grabbing a brush at random, you survey the blank canvas in front of you. Waving the brush in the air, you can envision the growing world inside your head transferring to the fabric. A brushstroke here, a smudge there; it’ll come out nicely.

In your mind there is an ocean, calm before the storm, cradling a boat against the rocky shore. The sun is going to shine brilliantly against the blue sky; a few whimsical clouds will float off the edges of the scene when you are done.

The old jar that you fill with water is too full, without a doubt going to splash all over the floor when you swirl the brushes around in it, hurriedly, trying to cleanse them before the next color stains the bristles. Tipping the jar, the extra water pours out onto the soil of the plant, basking in the afternoon light by the window, its leaves curling from the warmth.

There. Now the water won’t spill.

The clock that was your father’s, and his father’s before him, ticks on the wall, its hands pointing out the inevitable passing of time that you wisely choose to ignore. Someone comes up behind you, slipping an arm around your waist as their head rests heavily on your shoulder, peering at the painting that is just beginning to show some life.

They raise a hand, point a finger, leaving the space where their arm was cold. Your partner points out that the color doesn’t quite blend in the upper left hand corner. You lean forward to fix it, but their patience only lasts so long before they are pulling you back again. You leave it be, as fixed as you could make it—not perfect, but enough to satisfy them, which was all you really needed.

Today you added some strenuous details, sharpening the edges of the rocks against the shore, maybe a hair too much more than what is needed. But that’s alright, sometimes life is a little sharp. You hear the door open and your eyes flutter shut, squeezing and capturing the moment of peace you have before they pull you away again.

Do you like it? you ask, hoping. He replies, It's nice, love, and you flourish in his praise. You point out the rocks that you have been working on; he asks when you will finish the sky. When I have time, you tease, but he walks away, and you follow.

Outside the studio, the world is not as colorful; it lacks the certain serenity that you have created in your humble space. However, there is no mess in the simple hallways of your house. Perhaps that is a nice change. The two of you, you two are colorful enough for the blank world, a blur of love and shades sketched into the scenery around you.

That’s what you tell yourself.

Sometimes the shades and shadows around the two of you grow dark, lacking the proper light to see little details. But that’s not his fault, it’s yours. You are the artist after all. You discovered previously that paintings sometimes come to the artist, other times they are thoroughly thought out. Your current masterpiece was thought out, growing over months until you could wait no longer. It is your painting that you think about while your partner grows angry. He demands your attention, wondering where your mind is when not on him. He is the centerpiece of your creation, your world.

You’ll please him as you do, begging him to forgive you, and give your body and soul to the man who critiques your work. He takes more than you can give.

I’m sorry. What can I do to make you happy? Please stay.

The sky needs to be finished, which will be next on your list after you finish the small stretch of sand that is set behind the jagged rocks. Lids line neatly behind their bottles; you dip the brush into a bottle and spread it onto the palette. Another color, another spread.

Your hand freezes above the paint; the sloppy, quick mixture that you pour together on your palette is the same color as the bruises on your upper arms.

Ignore it.

You do.

As your father’s clock on the wall ticks the passing seconds, you try to lose yourself in your painting, but you struggle to focus, trained to focus on the man outside instead. He must be telepathic, because he opens the door without looking at your work.

Come on.  

Give me five minutes, you beg. But your partner declines.

Now, he tells you. So you go.

The paints have dried by the time you come back, stiff on the palette, dried unless you poke just hard enough to skew the outer shell, reaching the soft interior of the salvageable paint. That is the paint you use, the part you reclaim while you can.

If you poke hard enough at yourself, there is the same soft interior that you could save. You poke the paint instead.

Diving into the jug of water, the brush gracefully swims around, cleansing itself and thriving in the coolness. When you remove it, its bristles are unified, straight, and ready for their job. You move your hand too quickly, knocking the jug to the ground with a clatter and shatter.

The water spills on the ground, wetting the circular rug that lays innocently on the floor under the easel. What has the rug done to you? It’s taken your beatings, tears, paint spilled all over it, indents from your feet causing notches from where you stand. The jug, innocent and sad, lays in pieces as you leave it there. Perhaps it will clean itself up as you do when he leaves you on the floor, innocent and sad.

There is no sunlight brightening your studio today. It is cast away in the darkness, so you must turn on the overhead light. Glaring at you, the light hits the canvas at an unforgiving angle, pointing out the shadowing or blending that you messed up. You messed up. You messed up. You messed up!

You stare at the work, conceptualizing how to use the glare to fix the errors you see. From this different light, so much is exposed.  

The arm around your waist is strong. It pulls you when it wants to pull, it captures you when you try to be free. It holds you while you cry, but does not hold you with love and tenderness it holds you still. Still. Still. You let it hold you still, and your love which has been slowly dissipating vanishes with the final tear that you shed in that moment. No, you had said. No, you had begged. No, but still, the arm holds you.

You cannot paint today.

You try again the next day.

And the next.

And the next, and the next, and the next, and the–

Until you can.

The canvas becomes your refuge, your solace for the hurt.

When you come back to the painting, your body hurts and your heart aches, it screams and claws against your chest, climbing up your throat but you push it back down, swallowing. Your heart climbs again, beating harshly, so harshly that it causes your lungs to stop working and your brain to stop processing.

How did you learn to breathe? How did it come so naturally to a baby but not to you now? You gasp, your lungs begging for air when you feel wetness on your face. You’re crying again, so hard that you can’t see out of your two perfectly working eyes. You paint the emotions you feel onto the canvas–anger, hurt, sadness, shame, embarrassment. You paint the memories and they come out as storm clouds and rain that slashes against the canvas, crashing the poor ship against the rocky shore. The rocks that you chose to sharpen.

No sun. No blue sky.

You water the plant on the windowsill because it is the only thing you can keep alive. The painting is damaged. So are you. You leave your sad excuse of a studio and shut the door almost the whole way before you still. The house is quiet now, very quiet with him gone. Something pushes you, persuades you to push the door, opening it so that you can see the dark and gloomy canvas you masterfully tried, in vain, to create.

The persuasion is back again, pushing and pulling you gently into the room. The numbness recedes for a moment. Pulling out the paint, sloppily, you don’t mind the splash of color that makes its way onto the container anymore. You grab a brush, the fattest one, with the longest handle and you dive into the water that was for the plant on the windowsill.

Carefully, you stroke the brush across the ruined landscape. The ship, as it turns out, is salvageable. Through the darkness of the clouds, just the beginning rays of the early evening sun dance across the surface of the water.

Evelyn Shrader is a junior at Belmont University where she studies history and corporate communications with her fellow students. Originally from Seattle, Washington, Evelyn now lives with her family and dog in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where, outside of academics, she enjoys writing and reading.

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