Blue Horse Tears
I was 23 and living above a carpet refurbisher in a rundown studio when I won the portrait contest. Marcy walked through my open door while I was blowing smoke at one the dirty windows. “Letter for you” she said, handing it to me. I observed the insignia in the top right corner of the envelope, an imperial array of royal lines surrounding the decapitated head of an elk. The letter itself was succinct and grand. It informed me that I’d been honored to join the important lineage of those admitted by the National Institute of Visual Culture as recipients of the Tri-Annual Outstanding Achievement in Figuration award. I looked at it for a few minutes. My painting hadn’t even been that good. I had made it as a joke, a satirically serious self-portrait which combined bits of Rembrandt, Klimt and Katz; the painters I hated most. It had nothing to do with my actual work which comprised of my piecing together cuttings of romantic poetry, computer manuals, and pieces of broken glass as my own daily newspaper which I delivered in the night to the steps of random residential houses. Nobody really cared about my actual work, myself included, but the portrait had been a joke. So long I had tried and failed to make something genuinely beautiful and now the ugliest and most contrived of my pieces had become cause for recognition. Marcy called from the next room asking why I never make more coffee when I’ve taken the last of it. The letter told me that there was no need to recollect the painting as the Institute would be adding it to their permanent private collection and enclosed was my cheque for the prize money. It thanked me for my participation. Out the window, across the concrete pavilion a truck was making an early morning delivery to the Medical Supply Outlet. In the next room Marcy turned on the radio which announced that the day was going to be overcast and that somewhere a baseball game had been won. I decided to take a trip.