obsessions; if I couldn’t find my way into the project, it was about nothing more than a curiosity found during a bathroom renovation.
But then, one morning I woke up with an idea. Like spontaneous generation, this sudden certainty about what to do.
The first canvas I envisioned was of two soldiers, WWI soldiers, in my living room, on my furniture, playing chess. The pale brocade couch, the old orange armchair, all of it ours. The trees through the window, our trees. Our house. And them. These too-long-dead boys released from my walls, set back into motion. I imagined one leaning forward, intent on his next move. Jackie Mayhew, learning how to play chess. The other boy grinning from ear to ear.
I rose and went downstairs, leaving Owen still asleep. As the coffee brewed I grabbed a sketchbook, a few pieces of charcoal from my studio. By the time Owen shambled down, an hour or so later, I was lost, a half-empty, cold cup of coffee by my side. He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t expect him to. I was working. Somewhere in my consciousness it registered that he went back upstairs; and then that he came back down. I may have smelled hints of his shower, soap, shampoo. I heard the kitchen screen door, the wooden clatter as it closed. I knew without knowing that he had gone to the barn.
I wandered the house like a restless ghost myself that first day—a ghost with a sketchpad and charcoal. In each room I let myself imagine what these boys, these young men, might be doing. I didn’t have a particular idea in mind, not any one kind of activity. I didn’t think:
It needs to be ordinary
. Or:
It needs to be childlike
. In the guest bedroom, I sketched a boy opening the window. Just a very rough sketch. In the kitchen, I put one at the refrigerator,one at the stove, frying eggs. Another, sitting, his boot-heavy feet up on the table. I didn’t begin to think then about the level of logic involved in these works. Was I trying to depict an actual household? A strange barracks of a kind? Were these things all going on at once? At the same time of day? Would a single face appear in more than one room? Those were all questions I would ask in the weeks that followed, but then I just drifted from one space to the next.
I pushed aside another question too: how I was going to do paintings in which human figures played so prominent a role? I never had. But I would manage somehow, I told myself. My instincts couldn’t be this strong and also be wrong, I told myself—as if I had never made a passionate mistake in my life.
B y dinner, I was bursting, but the sight of Owen’s somehow sunken face silenced the excitement I wanted to share. I have always been an artist who talks through her projects. I like having conversations with people about what I’m doing. It helps me think. But with Owen in the state he was in, I knew it was wrong to crow about my breakthrough and my sudden conviction—necessary at the start of every project—that I was about to do the best work of my life. When he finally got around to asking me how my day had gone, I just said, “I think it’s moving forward.” And when he let the subject go at that, I tried hard not to resent his failure to detect the insincerity underlying my casual tone. A rich man has no business expecting a starving man to ask him how his four-star dinner was that night.
“I think I’ll do some shopping tomorrow,” he said, as we ate. “We’re out of stuff and I could use a change of scene.”
I heard the invitation, but giving up the next day’s work was unthinkable. I said nothing and after a bit he said, “So make me a list if there’s anything you want.”
“I will,” I said. “Thanks.” And then, “Shampoo, I think. And toilet paper too. Definitely toilet paper.”
“Just make a list,” he said.
I don’t know at what precise moment it occurred to me that maybe I could talk to Alison about work—mine
and
hers—but the next day, while Owen was on his
But then, one morning I woke up with an idea. Like spontaneous generation, this sudden certainty about what to do.
The first canvas I envisioned was of two soldiers, WWI soldiers, in my living room, on my furniture, playing chess. The pale brocade couch, the old orange armchair, all of it ours. The trees through the window, our trees. Our house. And them. These too-long-dead boys released from my walls, set back into motion. I imagined one leaning forward, intent on his next move. Jackie Mayhew, learning how to play chess. The other boy grinning from ear to ear.
I rose and went downstairs, leaving Owen still asleep. As the coffee brewed I grabbed a sketchbook, a few pieces of charcoal from my studio. By the time Owen shambled down, an hour or so later, I was lost, a half-empty, cold cup of coffee by my side. He didn’t say anything to me and I didn’t expect him to. I was working. Somewhere in my consciousness it registered that he went back upstairs; and then that he came back down. I may have smelled hints of his shower, soap, shampoo. I heard the kitchen screen door, the wooden clatter as it closed. I knew without knowing that he had gone to the barn.
I wandered the house like a restless ghost myself that first day—a ghost with a sketchpad and charcoal. In each room I let myself imagine what these boys, these young men, might be doing. I didn’t have a particular idea in mind, not any one kind of activity. I didn’t think:
It needs to be ordinary
. Or:
It needs to be childlike
. In the guest bedroom, I sketched a boy opening the window. Just a very rough sketch. In the kitchen, I put one at the refrigerator,one at the stove, frying eggs. Another, sitting, his boot-heavy feet up on the table. I didn’t begin to think then about the level of logic involved in these works. Was I trying to depict an actual household? A strange barracks of a kind? Were these things all going on at once? At the same time of day? Would a single face appear in more than one room? Those were all questions I would ask in the weeks that followed, but then I just drifted from one space to the next.
I pushed aside another question too: how I was going to do paintings in which human figures played so prominent a role? I never had. But I would manage somehow, I told myself. My instincts couldn’t be this strong and also be wrong, I told myself—as if I had never made a passionate mistake in my life.
B y dinner, I was bursting, but the sight of Owen’s somehow sunken face silenced the excitement I wanted to share. I have always been an artist who talks through her projects. I like having conversations with people about what I’m doing. It helps me think. But with Owen in the state he was in, I knew it was wrong to crow about my breakthrough and my sudden conviction—necessary at the start of every project—that I was about to do the best work of my life. When he finally got around to asking me how my day had gone, I just said, “I think it’s moving forward.” And when he let the subject go at that, I tried hard not to resent his failure to detect the insincerity underlying my casual tone. A rich man has no business expecting a starving man to ask him how his four-star dinner was that night.
“I think I’ll do some shopping tomorrow,” he said, as we ate. “We’re out of stuff and I could use a change of scene.”
I heard the invitation, but giving up the next day’s work was unthinkable. I said nothing and after a bit he said, “So make me a list if there’s anything you want.”
“I will,” I said. “Thanks.” And then, “Shampoo, I think. And toilet paper too. Definitely toilet paper.”
“Just make a list,” he said.
I don’t know at what precise moment it occurred to me that maybe I could talk to Alison about work—mine
and
hers—but the next day, while Owen was on his
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