Lost in Color

Lost in Color

I sit outside a café, drinking coffee and eating bits of a croissant as my fingers peel apart its layers this early Parisian morning. The light is soft and allows me to enjoy the movements of color along the street before the harshness of the midday sun makes squinting a requirement. It is still early. Traffic is subdued, and area residents are just starting their morning trek to work.

I paint morning colors for a living, but this was not always so. It was not always this way. I did not always have the time to be patient; for like everyone, I need to eat, and I was always scrapping the bottom of my bag, literally, for coins to purchase something from a dollar menu when I lived stateside. Only chance brought me here.

A crepe vender has perched her cart across the street, and I have an unimpeded view as she prepares a crepe du jour for her patron. I reach into my bag for my little black book. I have two: one is truly little for jotting notes; the other is larger for sketches and color. The cart is cute with its black and white motif including a striped canvas canopy. The vender, a young girl not much younger than me when I came to Paris, is dressed in a white blouse and black pants to complete the scene. The building behind lends itself to contrast, but only subtlety. The patron is wearing a polka doted skirt. This adds more contrast. I quickly sketch the cart and patron. This is a concept book for me. Sketch and color to be captured in my little black book. I like oils, but this morning I am using watercolor pens and later I will apply oil to canvas of the memory that I create.

The black and white cart will offer contrast to the color of a park scene with children playing in the background that I captured earlier this week. I will merge the ideas together on a single canvas and I will have no difficulty in selling it in the local gallery where I display most of my work. Although this one might go stateside.

As I finish adding some light color to complete the backdrop of the building, I begin to think of how it began.

* * *

Just in my twenties, I struggled to survive off my passion, art in general, but painting most especially. It takes something special to make a living in the art world, a benefactor it would seem. It takes money to eat and purchase supplies. Unfortunately, art was my side gig, and I worked a menial service job at a hotel to survive. It paid well enough to survive, but to both survive and paint, no. A new tube of high-quality oil could set me back thirty dollars. At times it was a choice. I chose the paint and skipped a few meals. A starving artist.

And then calamity struck, my mother fell ill and was hospitalized. A week later, the doctors told me she had only days. It was so long ago, and I used my materials sparingly. But not now and not with my mother dying. My mother had been my support, and pushed me to go bolder and brighter, not sparse in my application, but I had always resisted. This is not what I won awards for. Awards that paid no money.

I could not sleep those last nights and kept thinking of the paintings I was exposed to as a child in that wonderful house where she cleaned. It was two in the morning and I grabbed my pencils. I quickly sketched a park scene from where she took me to play as a child. Now, the paint. I would not hold back. I would be bold and bright. As I place more color upon the canvas, it was my love for her that was being exposed. My alarm rang, and I ran to the bus. Once finished at the hotel, another bus to the hospital. I had just an hour with her before leaving. She was so frail. It was only a matter of when. Another bus ride home. I had not eaten and with little sleep, I wanted to crash. But I had to complete the painting to share with her. The colors flowed from somewhere inside of me and I worked all night. Again, the alarm. With no time to clean, I placed my brushes in a jar of turpentine. There was no time for the painting to dry. Again, I rushed to the hotel, this time carefully carrying the painting. The hotel manager allowed me to stand it behind the front desk to protect it. When I returned for it, the manager stopped me. “I have had several guests remark about the painting,” he said, but I had no time to share.

Mom was asleep when I arrived. I placed the painting so that she might see it when she woke. I then sat in the room’s recliner and quickly nodded to sleep. A nurse gently woke me to tell me that my mother had passed. I began to cry.

“You can have a few minutes, but we will need to move your mom,” she says.

My eyes dart back and forth between the painting and mom, and the nurse notices it.

“It is beautiful.”

“She never saw it” I replied.

“Yes, she did. I was here. She stirred for a bit, saw it, and smiled. She fell back to sleep before later passing.”

I cried even more.

* * *

I wipe my tears and see that the ink has dried. Time to return home and create my next masterpiece. As I walk home, I think further back in time.

* * *

As a child, my mom and I were not poor. She cleaned houses to earn money. There just were no extras.

When I was six, mom took me to her cleaning jobs when there was no school. ‘Best you learn how to work,’ she would say. For me, all the homes were wonderful, but as I have learned many were considered middle class. One day, mom was excited for she had landed a job for a truly wealthy family. One of those non-school days, she tugged me along. I did not want to go. What child wants to dust? But go I must, and go I did.

Our entrance was through the garage which contained two luxury cars. Truly rich, these people were. Inside the house, it was full of paintings. Over time most of them changed, except for those on one wall along the back staircase. It made me want to paint and so I began drawing in school. It seemed I had some talent. I rushed through whatever work mom had me do, whenever she took me, so that I had time to study the paintings.

One day, the female owner of the house, I now call her Susan, was at home and caught me eyeing the paintings. “Which one do you like best?” she asked.

I pointed to one above a fireplace. “Oh, yes. I like that one too. Unfortunately, one of my clients came to see it yesterday and purchased it. So, it will leave soon.”

“Why do you sell them?”

“It’s my business. I own an art gallery.”

“Oh, that explains them changing all the time,” and Susan smiles. “Why do the ones over the back stairs never change?”

“I would never sell those, my daughter painted them before she died in an accident.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “They are beautiful,” and Susan smiles again.

One day Susan caught me drawing at the kitchen table while waiting for my mother. “I have something for you,” she says. She opens a drawer from the desk and retrieves a little black book and some watercolors. You can paint your ideas on these pages.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Share them with me some time,” she says,

* * *

I try to shake it off. All these memories are rushing back to me today. ‘Why today,’ I think, and I fall back into thinking of the past as I walk home.

* * *

It is the day of my mom’s funeral service. Somehow my mom had a small insurance policy to pay for this. I did not have any large photos of her, so I taped multiple snapshots of her to a blank canvas. Beside it I displayed the painting I made for her.

Susan came to the service.

She gave me a hug. “I know this is not the time, but your painting at the entrance is extraordinary. I would love to acquire it,” she said.

“I can’t. I made it for mom,” I replied

“I understand. Should you change your mind … call me.”

* * *

Three months passed and mom’s medical bills piled. I went to see Susan and rang the doorbell with the painting under my arm.

“I am so glad you came,” says Susan and she walks me in, and we sit in the formal living room. We chat a bit and then I unveil the painting. “It is as magnificent today as when I first saw it.”

I explained that I really did not want to sell it, but the medical bills were too much. Susan’s husband Tom, a corporate attorney, must have heard me as he walked down the hallway, sticks his head in the room and interrupts.

“The bills are addressed to you mother, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you sign anything at the hospital indicating you were responsible?”

“No.”

“Then ignore them. You are not liable for them, only your mom’s estate is.”

“But these people keep hounding me and telling me that I am responsible.”

“Give Susan your number, and I will have my paralegal reach out to you for the details. I will handle this for you.”

“I can’t afford you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I get my jollies when I can make debt collectors squirm.”

“Thank you.” I then turn to Susan. “Maybe I don’t need to sell it?”

“I want to show you something,” and we walk to the back stairs.

I am surprised. Susan has been acquiring some of my pieces and hanging them with her daughter’s.

“You have talent my dear. You should go to Paris and paint like my daughter did.”

“That would be wonderful, but I hardly have enough money to make rent.”

“Well, instead of me purchasing your painting, why don’t I rent it and display it in my gallery?”

“Excuse me?”

“You will still own it. I will return it to you upon your request.”

Before I can even think, she grabs her checkbook and writes a check to me for twenty thousand dollars. “Go to Paris. Take your little black book, gather ideas and return. I will commit to purchasing twelve of your paintings each year to resell in my gallery. Just be as generous with the color as you were with this one.”

I was stunned to say the least. This was the chance I needed

* * *

I have barely returned home and there is a knock at my door. A delivery man has a large package for me. I know that it contains a painting, but I only send them overseas, not receive them. I sign and take it inside to begin delicately peeling the layers of packaging from its precious cargo. Inside is my mother’s painting and a note from Tom. “I am sorry to bear bad news, but Susan passed away last week from a long illness. We had time to talk before she parted. She insisted this painting find its way home to you. The gallery remains open per Susan’s wish. Please continue shipping your works to me.”

It takes a moment for this to sink in. I grab my brushes. It is time to let the colors flow.