The Artist

Part 1 – 2000

I stand on the precipice, the wind lashing my face. Down below the welcoming rocks appear like the teeth of a saw begging to slice through my misery. In a couple of seconds all will change. They will find my transfigured corpse washed up on the shingle and they will weep over it.

Her tears will paste her hair to her cheeks, those same fine strands that I ran through my fingers when still they functioned, when I still breathed. Those same cheeks that I showered with kisses and held, warm, against my own. “Such a waste!” they will lament, she too. And they will glance at her surreptitiously and she will pretend not to notice, but those glances will pierce her heart. She brought him to this. She had the world in her fingers, and, like fine sand, she let it trickle through. The elegy will talk of a promising student, someone who would have transformed art, would have created masterpieces beyond all compare. But now the only masterpiece he leaves us is his death, a finely-crafted ode to the goddess Aphrodite and a riposte to the ways of this material world.

So easy, so close. Just one step more and perfection can be achieved!

And she will have to live with it.

It is time to go…

---

When she first appeared before him, Jasper thought that Elsa was perhaps a vision rather than a real version. He was hunched over his sketchpad when a shadow blocked out the light and, looking up, he saw the most perfect girl in all creation. “What are you drawing?” she asked, smiling.

“This rock here with a flower growing out of it,” he replied, nervously. “It caught my eye.”

She sat beside him and looked. “It’s very good. Are you studying Fine Art here?”

“No, I wish I was. I’m doing Business Studies. I’d have liked to study Art, but my dad said there was no future in it and, since I would be shelling out so much to study, I should pick something more reasonable. But I still like to sketch in my free time.”

“It’s a shame that you made that decision,” she replied. “You’d make a brilliant artist.”

She wasn’t the first to have said that to him, but she did convey her thoughts with a greater degree of surety than the others.

“What about you?” he asked, wishing to change the subject.

“I’m reading Art History, specialising in the Pre-Raphaelites.”

“I love the Pre-Raphaelites! Who’s your favourite?”

“Holman Hunt of course! I love his Biblically-themed works and that amazing attention to detail.”

“I’m more of a Rossetti man myself. Those flame-haired temptresses.” He gazed at her. She was flame-haired, and he was tempted. Sorely. He plucked up his courage. “Say, do you fancy talking art over coffee. My shout!”

She smiled. “That would be a pleasure, just so long as you finish that flower first!”

Within a week they were dating and within a month he had transferred his course of study to Fine Art.

They were halcyon days looking back. Completely unrealistic and yet happy in a fashion. She would sit with him as he painted and comment, criticise, push him forwards. She painted herself too and although she never had his innate talent, she had ideas that were so out-of-the-box, so leftfield that he wondered at her. She would leap into new fields of perspective, brushwork, colour experimentation and expression that he would never have thought of, let alone dared to attempt alone. Some worked and some didn’t, but she would never compromise. When he’d suggest that, striking though a painting was, something like that would never sell, she’d look at him disappointed and sulk as if he had sworn.

The same look that she gave him when he smoked weed with Steve and Nic, and when he spent all day in front of the telly or on his phone. “You have a gift,” she’d admonish, “and that comes with a responsibility to use it.”

And the constant nagging took its toll. Like he was somehow different from the others on his course, like it should all be art and nothing else. Phil told him he’d be better off without her; Steve was even less complimentary. But he remembered how he’d felt on that first day in the sun and pushed their advice away.

Until that fateful day. That day when they’d got a particularly strong batch from Kevin and had spent most of the afternoon monged on the settee with Judge Judy for company. That day when he’d promised to go to an exhibition of some alternative Dutch artist with her but forgot. That day when she came back and berated him more than usual for wasting his talent. That day when he had finally had enough and told her what he thought; that she had no fucking clue what it was like because she was shit at painting herself and that she had better take a chill pill and stop trying to run his life for him. That day when he told her to fuck off.

That day when she did fuck off.

For good.

The days and weeks that followed were hell. She would not answer his calls and when he finally did see her, she would not accept his apologies. That had been hard enough but when he heard that she was seeing someone else, some wild-haired studio potter named Ieuan then it was all simply too much.

That was the day when he had taken the train out to Wales, to the very end of the line and then, when it could go no further, he’d taken the bus until it dropped him off in the middle of nowhere and from there he’d walked to the little village where he’d spent so many happy childhood holidays. And there he’d climbed up to the top of the awesome cliffs that had so scared and exhilarated him when he’d walked along them as a boy.

And then he’d stood on the precipice of life itself and contemplated taking that ultimate step.

Yet, when the moment came, he had not been able to do it. And so he had slunk back defeated and spent months in the depths of despair.

---

They met at a party. Maya was sitting in a corner smoking. She beckoned him over and offered it to him. He took it, his first joint since Elsa. The smoke engulfed him. Maya was everything that Elsa was not. Whilst Elsa was local, Maya was exotic. She got her sultry looks from her Indian father and Chinese mother. And whilst Elsa preferred to wait until the right person and time, within an hour they were at it in the bedroom of a stranger in whose house the party was being held.

In the morning Josh awoke, his head thick and tongue furry. He regretted the night before, the drink and the drugs. Then he turned over and saw the woman lying asleep at his side. He traced his eyes over the small of her back and the nape of her neck and all that regret dissipated. He leaned over and stroked her hair. She murmured, turned over and opened her eyes. They kissed and she held out her arms. As they kissed again, Maya enveloped him in her embrace.

---

They were sitting in a café on the South Bank of the Thames watching the boats ply past full of camera-laden tourists from near and far. She put her hand over his and asked, what he was thinking.

“This scene,” he said. “I was imagining painting it in my mind.”

“Then paint it, I’m sure you’d do it justice.”

He said nothing.

“And it would sell too. People love stuff like that. Have you seen that guy on the Embankment who sells scenes like this for a hundred quid each. He must shift dozens every day.”

“Painting by numbers. They’re done by rote in a studio from photographs. He just adds the finishing touches there.”

“Does it matter? People still find joy in them and cough up the cash.”

“It’s not art.”

“Man cannot live on fresh air alone. He must earn ten times what you do, yet he is half the artist you are.”

He gazes into her dark eyes and wonders at his luck at being blessed by such a wonderful woman. “I’ll think about it,” he says.

She leans over and kisses him on the lips. “I love you Josh,” she whispers as she withdraws.

“I love you too, Maya,” he replies.

---

His first exhibition is at a small place in Shoreditch. He stands there uneasily in his new suit. By his side is Maya, confident and resplendent in a red gown that displays her cleavage and enhances her curves. Her smiles charm the meagre crowd of friends, tutors and small-time art lovers. Some have spent all their free cash on a work to help him on his journey. The prices range from £100 to £500, not much but it is a start. At the end of the night, he has sold ten of the twenty scenes on display and another gallery has agreed to stock his work. Over the moon, the young couple go to a Japanese place in Soho to celebrate and there, drunk on success and sake, he proposes to Maya.

Maya, of course, accepts.

Jasper cannot believe how much his life has changed since Elsa left him and that gut-wrenching day on the clifftop.

Part 2 – 2035

I stand on the precipice, the wind lashing my face. Down below the welcoming rocks appear like the teeth of a saw begging to slice through my misery. In a couple of seconds all will change. They will find my transfigured corpse washed up on the shingle and they will weep over it.

She will weep over it.

Her tears will paste her hair to her cheeks, those same fine strands that I ran through my fingers when still they functioned, when I still breathed. Those same cheeks that I showered with kisses and held, warm, against my own. “Such a waste!” they will lament, she too, for there was so much more money to be made. And they will glance at her pityingly and she will pretend not to notice, but those glances will pierce her heart. She supported him and yet still he did this. He had the world in his fingers, and, like fine sand, he let it trickle through. The elegy will talk of someone who transformed art, who created masterpieces beyond all compare. But now he is gone.

It is all lies of course, all except the final line. He did not transform what he could have, and he did not create anything beyond compare. All he achieved was commercial success, but in a world dedicated to Mammon, is that not all that matters?

To her, no, it is not. It never was.

The original her, not the one who will soak up the sympathy like a sponge.

I imagine her fine hair running through my fingers. I imagine how it was, when possibility still existed and compromise was but a dream.

So easy, so close. Just one step more and…

I cannot live with it anymore. Live with the fact that I rejected art and all that is beautiful for this material, base world.

It is time to go…

---

The death of Jasper Maitland came as a profound shock to the art world. One of the most successful oil painters of his generation, a member of the ROI and recently elected to the RA, arguably the highest accolade a painter can hope to attain. His London scenes are to be found in well-to-do homes across the world and cheap signed prints of them in the dwellings of the less financially fortunate. Yes, it is true that some of the critics pan him for unoriginality, a pandering to sentimentality and a leaning towards commercialism that does not do justice to his undoubted skills. Besides, they said the same about John Everett Millais a century and a half earlier, and his statue stands proudly outside the Tate whilst many a less commercial artist is but a footnote in a dusty tome. No, he has been a success, there is no one that can doubt that fact. Those that do are merely jealous.

Which makes his death all the more shocking! He was found, they say, at the foot on the fearsome cliffs south of Cwmtydu, a gorgeous stretch of coastline that he had walked along frequently ever since he’d bought a cottage there three years’ earlier (and indeed, what wonderful paintings those cliffs had inspired!). Was it suicide or was it an accident? The latter obviously, for although the day had been dry and not particularly breezy, one can always stumble and fall and, well… it does not bear thinking about.

No, those rumours of suicide are simply gossip, and distasteful gossip at that. After all, why would a man with more than a million in the bank, two beautiful children and the stately Maya Maitland by his side (why she is still a handsome woman even as she enters into her sixth decade!) wish to leave this world that had given him so much (though the favour was amply returned, of course!)? No, malicious rumours, nothing more, may his soul rest in peace.

---

As the President of the Royal Academy stands in the pulpit to deliver his eulogy to the packed congregation in the cathedral, MPs and media stars, generals and even a minor royal in their midst, all eyes are on the grieving widow and her two daughters, all elegantly dressed in black, their eyes moist with heartfelt tears.

So transfixing is the troika and so powerful are the words of the eulogy, that no one notices another woman sitting at the back of the church in amongst those people who knew and supported the deceased genius in his early days before fame came like a steamroller. Tears grace the cheeks of Elsa Wise too, but they are tears marking opportunities missed, talent gone to waste, the tragedy of what could have been.

As the congregation rises to sing ‘How Great Thou Art’, she takes her leave and departs, back to her own simple studio where works of great originality and promise are being created to stay unnoticed by the world.

Written 07/0/21-10/04/22,

Smallthorne & Stoke-on-Trent to Coventry, UK

Copyright © 2022, Matthew E. Pointon