La Traviata , extra loud. The Sugarcubes. All her yell-along music. Music she rode during the hours she worked.
When she felt intensely anti-Karl, Rain got out the series of small self-portraits she had continued making over the years she had known him, despite his deep disdain for realism. These, especial y, she knew heâd have hated, paintings of herself looking odd, dark, angry and lopsided. Somewhat Lucien Freud, with a bit of Ralph Steadman. Not quite Francis Bacon, but getting there. It was something she considered a peculiar little habit, for those days when she needed to exert something individual and independent. Paintings of a woman no one would want to own or control. Paintings of a need-free quirky character, each on a six-by-six inch block of wood, each one created wet, in one session, with little planning beyond whatever gush of emotion she might have been coping with that day, they were beginning to add up in the drawer where she tucked them away to dry. Rain didnât consider them any part of her âreal artâ so she didnât allow them to amount to anything; they were more a kind of diary.
On the wall behind her easel, Rain had tacked up the encrusted paint she occasional y peeled off the glass of her palette. In the three years she had inhabited her studio, she had produced eight such constructions and they told the story of her materials. Alizarin Crimson, True Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue, Hansa Yellow Deep, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Viridian Green. These were arrayed along two sides of the rectangle and then blended, bent and zagged toward various browns and blacks in the center and toward the larger globs of Ivory Black and Titanium White on opposite ends.
They were abstracts, worked in an honest, time-consuming and organic way. Rain sometimes stared at them in wonder. There was a kind of perfection in a palette. A purity of potential and intention unsullied by intelligence and effort. Free of the ruin of concept or affectation but full of the richness of human touch.
Once on her âreal artâ canvases, Rainâs colors all tended toward mud. She worked the paint like a sculptor, adding, shaping, pushing, contouring, adding some more. So the palette had something she tried to achieve in her intentional work. An honesty and a purity that her hand ruined.
The work was not going smoothly. She was distracted thinking about Karl and the fall. Heading off to England. How sheâd do there. Rain never liked England, though Gwen and John went almost every summer and she had visited them there often.
From home Rain loved England and all things English. She had watched the Royal Wedding at two oâclock in the morning with one of her nannies when she was only five. She loved tea and biscuits, Jane Austen, all the BBC shows and British movies, loved Shakespeare and many of her favorite authors were British or at least partly so. But somehow every time she went to England she found herself speaking her American accent with a self-conscious exaggeration, flinching at the derision that seemed to flow toward her from even the most charming of citizens. Brits she met had such a good-natured way of delivering their condescension, like they just wanted to watch how well you could bear it. Not well in Rainâs case, it turns out. Rain never particularly thought of herself as an Americanâit just wasnât high on her list of self-modifiersâbut abroad she found she took it on as a fierce mantle. More abhorrent to her than the way Americans were treated in Europe, however, was the smarmy, effete denial many of them affected regarding their own ingredients while they were there. Like they had baked up a lobster with eggs and flour.
Rain liked the French better. They were less interested in Americans and more interested in all things American, which added up to a grudging respect with a cover of utter disregard. This contrasted wholly with the disdain masked by
When she felt intensely anti-Karl, Rain got out the series of small self-portraits she had continued making over the years she had known him, despite his deep disdain for realism. These, especial y, she knew heâd have hated, paintings of herself looking odd, dark, angry and lopsided. Somewhat Lucien Freud, with a bit of Ralph Steadman. Not quite Francis Bacon, but getting there. It was something she considered a peculiar little habit, for those days when she needed to exert something individual and independent. Paintings of a woman no one would want to own or control. Paintings of a need-free quirky character, each on a six-by-six inch block of wood, each one created wet, in one session, with little planning beyond whatever gush of emotion she might have been coping with that day, they were beginning to add up in the drawer where she tucked them away to dry. Rain didnât consider them any part of her âreal artâ so she didnât allow them to amount to anything; they were more a kind of diary.
On the wall behind her easel, Rain had tacked up the encrusted paint she occasional y peeled off the glass of her palette. In the three years she had inhabited her studio, she had produced eight such constructions and they told the story of her materials. Alizarin Crimson, True Ultramarine, Cerulean Blue, Hansa Yellow Deep, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Viridian Green. These were arrayed along two sides of the rectangle and then blended, bent and zagged toward various browns and blacks in the center and toward the larger globs of Ivory Black and Titanium White on opposite ends.
They were abstracts, worked in an honest, time-consuming and organic way. Rain sometimes stared at them in wonder. There was a kind of perfection in a palette. A purity of potential and intention unsullied by intelligence and effort. Free of the ruin of concept or affectation but full of the richness of human touch.
Once on her âreal artâ canvases, Rainâs colors all tended toward mud. She worked the paint like a sculptor, adding, shaping, pushing, contouring, adding some more. So the palette had something she tried to achieve in her intentional work. An honesty and a purity that her hand ruined.
The work was not going smoothly. She was distracted thinking about Karl and the fall. Heading off to England. How sheâd do there. Rain never liked England, though Gwen and John went almost every summer and she had visited them there often.
From home Rain loved England and all things English. She had watched the Royal Wedding at two oâclock in the morning with one of her nannies when she was only five. She loved tea and biscuits, Jane Austen, all the BBC shows and British movies, loved Shakespeare and many of her favorite authors were British or at least partly so. But somehow every time she went to England she found herself speaking her American accent with a self-conscious exaggeration, flinching at the derision that seemed to flow toward her from even the most charming of citizens. Brits she met had such a good-natured way of delivering their condescension, like they just wanted to watch how well you could bear it. Not well in Rainâs case, it turns out. Rain never particularly thought of herself as an Americanâit just wasnât high on her list of self-modifiersâbut abroad she found she took it on as a fierce mantle. More abhorrent to her than the way Americans were treated in Europe, however, was the smarmy, effete denial many of them affected regarding their own ingredients while they were there. Like they had baked up a lobster with eggs and flour.
Rain liked the French better. They were less interested in Americans and more interested in all things American, which added up to a grudging respect with a cover of utter disregard. This contrasted wholly with the disdain masked by
Similar Books
