Paint

When I wandered into studio an hour early, expecting to have some time alone before I was mobbed by the class, Andrea was already there. She was painting with loose precision, in the almost-controlled trance of obsessive creation, slapping and touching and stroking paint onto the surface. It was almost hypnotic, and I didn't notice that I was staring.

"The ancients had it right", she said abruptly, shocking my awareness back to reality.

I looked around, then realized she was talking to me. I tried to respond and croaked, then cleared my throat in embarraassment. "In what way?" I asked.

"Art. Magic. Poetry. Truth. They're all the same thing."

I just looked at her. My face must have been as blank as my mind, because she stopped painting, came around the canvas and sat down. She was smaller than I'd remembered, or perhaps she was larger than her physical size.

"Art is magic is poetry is truth," she repeated. "The great works contain a fragment of the artist's soul. Screw technique. Art can't be unless its creator cares intensely, and beyond that it's all talk. A sad attempt to paint a layer of intellect between ourselves and the truth. And if you care enough, you become your art."

Smaller than I'd thought, yes, but stranger too. "Metaphorically, yeah," I put in.

"Metaphor hell! It's what happens. When you paint, then you're completely there, involved in the act. You're really real. Can you claim that with certainty at any other point in your life? The you that's real at any moment is gone the next, just a memory, and you're something different. Changed.

"Painting captures what I am. It's me; there's a me there. I'm real. That's where the joy of creation comes from -- becoming something. Being. And the more I get involved in it, the more of me it is..." She trailed off, then added, "Think about it."

I did. I couldn't paint. Taking a bit of my soul? Great idea to implant. It didn't matter that I didn't believe it; it changed me. I spent three hours staring at my painting, hating it. It had always provided an escape...but an escape into what?

Then I heard her name, and the rest of the class flooded into existence around me. "...seen Andrea's painting? I't's amazing!"

I turned around. They were gathered around her easel, like so many ants around sugar syrup, not realising it would drown them. She wasn't there. Despite myself, I joined them.

The painting was Andrea. In mannerism, expression and tone it was perfect. The aura of slightly manic mystery was hers. Even her eyes, their elusive shade of green-violet -- never quite blue -- were there. Following me. Eternally unchanging, fixed, permanent and real.

And trapped.

***