PART FOUR ~ Number Three

All I could contemplate, as I lifted my head from Rodgers scrawled message, was the very real envy I’d fallen into:
Envy was the spur, the kick in the backside, I needed in order to get back to the Work I was meant to accomplish. Each one of those stacked canvases, one-by-one, were the fruits of whatever envy I carried for Rodgers’ success. I felt nothing but pride in [what I felt was] this eclipse of Rodgers’, “Beauty.” The results were there, propped against the bare walls of my make-shift studio.
My legs felt weak. Feeling drained, yet comforted, the accomplishment was coursing through my veins like a hypodermic of something illegal.
[You took your pride, Steven, and shut out the world.]

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I began to see it clearly now:
I’d come out of a sustained, and dazed, indifference; I’d willed myself into production, into Work. What had begun as envy of Rodgers’ “Beauty,” was nothing more than an over-all movement toward impetus; an imperative, ultimately, drawing me into myself...
...Then, outward, toward some other side. Those paintings, putting all modesty aside, were the end results of an inner transformation.

Onward:

The last word, as I lifted the canvas from the easel, and placed it against the others, was:
Rodgers must be dumbfounded by my behavior.


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I didn’t know whether I wanted to see Rodgers and Cee-Cee yet. I didn’t even know if I could speak again to others. Everything, after all my silent, solitary, work seemed too much to think about. (Would I remember the Art of Conversation? How could I go out into the world, and speak, without whispering, mumbling.) I wasn’t myself, at all. I was deaf to my own sense of Self. Come here, go away...Come here, go away.


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[Well. It’s done. You’ve sung yourself some fine work songs, Steven; a virtual Devil’s Chorus, as you’ve sketched, painted, and sweated your way to completion.]


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So, there went Rodgers’ invitation to the floor:
The release and pleasure I felt was unequaled to anything I’d ever felt before. My Ego was just about ready to burst. There was a distinct impression, lying somewhat left of consciousness, I’d managed to scale a borderland of madness, and lived to tell the tale.
I brought myself back, gazing at the completed paintings, one-by-one, taking my time with each nuance, before moving on to the next.
Then, I recalled, all the injunctions I’d punished myself with in the past; the faceless, vocal critic, I’d listened to, but had never seen. [Well. It’s just the past, again, staring me in the face; a ghost, hovering like a knowing companion, just out of reach.]
I knew I had to see the paintings as others would see them. I had to be free of self-censoring, and move forward.


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The Critic was gone.


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“Yes, Steven”, I found myself speaking into the empty loft, “These paintings were done by you. You’ve done well, Steven. Nothing’s going to hold you back any longer. Nothing. The new Decade will see you in the Gallery; will see your paintings hung. You’ve done well, boy. Very well, by God.”



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Within those four months I’d spent painting, the inner-critic--the “voices,” which always seemed to dog each one of my steps--began to fade into low mumbles, until one day they disappeared completely In the face of these forty paintings, I felt as if a giant weight had been pulled, lifted, from my shoulders. Those “other voices” were no longer with me.


[I had painted: The most brilliantly colored flower; the dying sunlight of dusk, as it caresses a skyscraper; two men, seated upon a park bench, in Central Park (each one, gazing into their own private “bubble” of a young woman, nude, and kneeling at their feet); a discarded whiskey bottle, given beauty, as it rests before the open door of a tavern; a pale, yet still, beating heart, dominating the center of the canvas (along its edges, the half-forms of long-ago lovers and the entwined limbs of a leaf-abundant cypress tree); a phantasmagorical mixture of Liverpool docks, and the intrusion of a Hudson River seascape (these two vantage points, are off-set by the a man and a woman, seated in a small rowboat, kissing); a mine worker, trudging up a hill, with a lunch-pail; two nude women, lounging poolside (one is reading a magazine and the other is listening intently to the strumming of a lone guitar player--this figure is hastily sketched upon the right-hand corner of the canvas); one tree, standing alone, in a garbage-strewn lot; sunset and nightfall, represented by a woman bending over a tub of bubbling water, lighting a candle; a framed sunset, within a forest of multiple varieties of trees (the entire colour composition is bursting with reds and greens); an old woman, seated in a wheelchair, gazing at herself in a hand-held mirror; a ballerina, wearing an uplifted tutu, revolving, in dance, upon a bare stage; a baby monkey, leaping through a bathroom mirror; a nude, and nubile, young woman, emerging from a mud-filled pool; splashes of reds, greens, and blues, spraying outward from the top of an open cardboard box; four people, (two men, and two women) seated at a table, gazing upon an empty chair; an umbrella, hanging from a front-door knob; two lovers, (Chagall-like) embracing, as they fly above the clouds; a woman, hanging, Shibari-style, upside-down, over a candlelit dining-room table (her wrists and ankles are bound and she’s suspended, completely naked); two apples, set upon the seat of a wooden chair (a snake is wrapped around each arm of the chair); bamboo shoots, along a river’s edge, and 18th Century ships sailing into port; a nude woman, arranging a vase of flowers; a nude black man, and a nude white woman, lying together, asleep, in front of two huge salt and pepper shakers; a lone woman, (painted as a portrait) with a tear-drop falling from each eye (there is the crouched-form of a nude man, reflected within each of the woman’s eyes); a star rising, and a star falling, over Manhattan; a Spring leaf, brushed by a breeze; a young woman in a swimming pool, with sparks shooting from her body; five apples, two oranges, and three ripe pears, placed upon a windowsill; stout beer, and a pack of Export cigarettes, upon a water-stained tabletop; a bare light-bulb, illuminating a multi-colored stage setting; very small, fuchsia flowers, arranged within an empty wineglass; light, falling upon a woman, asleep upon a long couch (she is covered by a thin, satin, sheet, which accentuates each contour and crease of her nude form, beneath); a Still Life, consisting of fruit and a half-full bottle of wine; a young woman, winding a Grandfather’s clock (the glass cabinet door is part-way open, and the woman’s breasts and lower-body can be glimpsed, in reflecting brushstrokes. The woman is wearing an old, lace nightgown. The clock is poised at twelve o’clock); shackles, whips, paddles, and two masks, suspended by hooks, on a bare wall; a group of women, playing softball in Central Park; a Self-Portrait: brushes, and a palette, placed upon a table-top (at the edge of the canvas, one part of an easel can be discerned, and my face is partially seen there, sketched); a young woman, bending over the two arms of a living-room chair (both of her bare buttocks are uplifted, and out-thrust, from the center of the chair); and, finally, the interior of a bedroom, viewed through an open window (a man and a woman can be seen, naked and asleep, in each others arms).


Forty paintings, done.

[to be continued...]