Her Studio

I can see it on your face.

You walk in the door and are bombarded by a painfully white room with a concrete floor.

As you walk toward the center of the room you notice areas where the paint is more thickly splattered and more condensed. You realize these are the spaces where I have worked on a particular piece. The light is probably different there, or even the mood or the energy or all of the above.

In the center of the room there is a giant canvas on the floor and a paint splattered wooden frame around it with a platform across it that is on grocery cart wheels and must be used to work details on the canvas, the center being too far away to reach from the sides.

You immediately want to be here in the daytime and see the sun when it comes to hang with me while I paint.

The sun must feel the need to knock on the door or the window before entering wanting to not disturb the artist at work in her lair.

You remember I mentioned the studio itself will end up being an art piece. When I feel the time is right to move to another space, I’ll have a showing of the pieces the were created here and then the space itself will be sold, as is, with all the notes to myself on the walls written in sharpie and pencil and pink pen and the seemingly random groupings of paint on the floor and ceiling.

"How did that paint get on the ceiling?"

I turn away smiling.

My neck is enticing to you and then you notice I'm looking at the very opposite corner of the room and so you walk toward it with purpose to see the paintings hung there as well as leaning inside their museum style cubbies. Only then do you notice the small working kitchen and bedroom almost hidden in the back of the studio.

"Do you live here?"

"No, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense to go home so I just stay."

You smile at the fruits and veggies and beer and tequila in the fridge. You pick up the Oban scotch on the counter and turn back to smile at me.

I smile back. I turn and find the remote choosing to play Miles for us tonight. So begins our evening of just enough scotch and too much of everything else except each other.

It won’t be like this forever but it's nice to know we are capable of this. The promise of a bright and loving future gives the evening a plump density reminiscent of a waterbed, warm and undulating.

The morning is bright and cool and reminiscent of early mornings in college when you were still drunk from the party the night before but still had to get to class. Late again.

This morning we can just linger. I wrap the sheet around myself and grab a canvas that is still in progress. Tilt and roll the easel to the bed. I go back for paint and something to sit on and then, ready, the artist gazes at you and the way you are laying in the too small bed, the blanket covering very little of your very tan skin. You're so bright and glowing in this white room on these white sheets. I close one curtain and turn on the small lamp...ahhh, now we have shadows and a little rainbow from the sun shining through the curtain pull.

Pencil first. Large sweeping movements across what is now to be a background. Blues and greens and a few hot pink flashes on the canvas will not frame your glowing skin and perfect neck.