The Art Prize

Taylor stared at the girl in the pond. Ensnared by her haunted expression. Mesmerised by the way the water pulled the fabric of her dress taut against her stomach like fingers tearing her down and pushing her under. The girl was caught unawares. The shock of her imminent death rippling over her face beneath rivulets of clear gesso that trapped her beneath the glossy surface of the canvas.

Taylor could feel herself falling into the water after her. Her imagination snagging against the weeds that snaked around her legs. Grasping slimy tendrils against the pearl-white flesh that flailed desperately amidst splashes of cobalt and turquoise. Dark patches of Prussian Blue swelled up from the edges of the canvas, ready to consume it’s victim as she sank into the depths of it’s colour. There was something about the way her fingers seemed to reach desperately back out towards the viewer as though asking you to just wait a moment. The realisation that it was all a big mistake and that she wasn’t ready to die yet.

Taylor jumped with an involuntary shiver as Cass sidled up to her, twitching her fingers in that tell-tale nervous way of hers. Silently asking her what she thought.

Taylor inclined her head in a little nod of approval. “It’s really good Cass, your best work so far.”

Cass breathed deep with relief. “I wasn’t sure, it’s kind of different to what I’ve been doing before. I’m going to call it Hashtag Ophelia.”

“Your Ophelia looks like she was pushed into that water.”

“Yeah well, aren’t we all? No one commits suicide without someone having pushed them to the brink of despair.”

Taylor locked eyes again with the girl in the pond, wondering what had driven her to that kind of drastic action. No guy, not even a Prince of Denmark was worth that level of break-up angst. The girl seemed to be in agreement now that it was all too late, her frozen expression staring back full of bitterness and regret – shouldn’t have thrown herself away for him.

Cass brought over two cups of green tea and prodded Taylor away from the painting and back towards the couch. Cass put her own teacup down and rummaged around in her tote bag for her black Moleskine sketchbook, flicking the pages until she found a set of prep sketches for the painting that she pushed across for Taylor to look at.

“I wasn’t sure if I should redo it though. My original idea was to have her holding her phone. I wanted it to be like all this kind of endless scrolling through perfection reflected in her eyes and the water around her as she sinks. That she will never be as pretty as all those other girls. That she’ll never measure up to the weight of societies expectations. Have her all fake boobs, botox, puffy lips and vamp eyes, fake lashes and a spray tan that is just washing away from her as she drowns in the stupidity of it all… I couldn’t get any of the sketches right though. The ones with the phones just looked a bit corny, more like she was just texting the guy goodbye.”

Taylor considered the page before her. Pencil marks outlining various stages of a girl drowning in square tiled boxes. Death curated and captured within an Insta feed. The idea was good but it felt forced, rather like the app itself where everything was trying too hard to be perfect. Taylor turned back through the pages of the Moleskine notebook, her eyes resting against a sketch done in black texta pens that was sharp and immediate, just like the canvas propped up on the easel.

Cass had picked her tea back up and was pressing her fingers into the dents of the hand-thrown vessel. Her fingers twitching against the radiant heat as she chewed her bottom lip, observing the reactions of her friend’s review. “Yeah I had to keep coming back to that one which was the first sketch I did. Just her drowning. Perhaps it does work. She’d be more of a ghoster for sure. Suicide as the ultimate disappearing fuck-you act right?”

Taylor nodded and sipped her tea, taking the opportunity to continue to flick through some of the other pages to see what other ideas and false-starts her friend had been working on. She looked back over at the painting as she handed the sketchbook back.

“This is the one. You should enter it in that big art prize that’s on at the gallery.”

“What? The Magellan Art Prize?”

Taylor nodded.

Cass shook her head. “Nah, forget it. A prize like that just goes to one of those art world darlings. You need to be all ‘established’ and shit. Anyway you need like a hundred bucks to just submit your entry and wind up on a giant pile of rejection. I’ll keep it here till November when there’s the local Christmas show and hope I sell it then.”

Taylor shrugged nonchalantly and rummaged in her purse for two fifty dollar notes.

“Yeah right, drowned girls really make great Christmas presents. Look don’t sweat about it, I’ll pay your entry fee ok.”

Cass blanched and grabbed the money off her friend and waved it around in the air as she reeled off just some of the better ways she thought she could spend it.

“This is precious okay. I could do so much more with this. I could buy new canvases with this. Pay the fucking rent on time. Buy shoes that aren’t falling apart”

She inhaled heavily: “This is a really good night out - lots of laksa and beers. You don’t want to waste this. Come on, if you got spare money to splurge on me then let’s go watch a movie, stuff our faces and drink until we’re blinded instead.”

Taylor frowned in disappointment at her friend and snatched her $100 back.

“No way. I’m taking this and the painting and submitting it on your behalf. So what if the odds are low? Doesn’t stop millions of people from buying Lotto tickets every week. This at least has merit.”

Cass rolled her eyes at the pointlessness of it all and swallowed the last dregs of her tea. Lotto tickets were for delusional fools who couldn’t just accept their own diminished place in society. But there was no use arguing with Taylor once her friend had set her mind to something. To protest further would be to waste time as well as money.

_

Cass danced her fingers across the rows of dresses jammed together on the rack, unleashing a low hum that grew into a defined “Soooo..”.

Taylor put down the glomesh bag she’d been admiring and came over. Cass had a definite cheeky twinkle in her eye, the kind that hinted at an imminent outpouring of gossip. Taylor smiled and nudged her friend. “Sooo what?”

Cass took a deep breath and launched into the speech she’d been kicking around in her head for the last 24 hours. “Okay so I was wrong and I owe you a hundred dollars. Now, not actually having a hundred dollars, I hope you’ll be content with picking out the fanciest old dress that you can find here for less than thirty bucks and accompany me to the opening night of the Magellan Art Prize next Thursday night.”

Taylor’s eyes widened in comprehension and awe. A smug grin spread across her face. “OMG I totally knew it, you made the shortlist! Hah, and you thought it was a waste of time.”

Cass squirmed and deflected back to the rack of vintage frocks tugging out a suitably cheap blue fringed mini dress as a suggestion. “Yeah okay I already admitted I was wrong now hurry up and choose a dress. My shift starts in twenty.”

Taylor dismissed the blue fringes and pulled out a long flowy seventies floral piece and handed it to Cass. “This is huge. You need a dress for yourself that isn’t that tired old red slinky thing. You need to channel the spirit of Ophelia once you’re up on that stage accepting the prize.”

Cass shook her head and shoved the dress away. “Forget it, we’re here to pick out a dress for you to say thank you for bullying me into entering. For the record, I’m not going to win. The winner is always someone really established. Someone whose exhibited before, who gets featured in newspapers and shit like that. They don’t give hundred grand art prizes to nobodies like me. Maybe in twenty years I might have a shot at it but certainly not yet.”

Taylor pouted and wiggled the maxi dress playfully at her friend. “Aww just buy the dress and stop being so pessimistic. Your painting is brilliant and the judging panel recognises that.”

Cass elbowed her friend and rolled her eyes. “No chance… Look I’m just grateful to be hung amongst them. So let’s go, have fun, drink lots of free bubbles and flirt with guys who all turn out to be gay as soon as you suggest sharing a cab home”

–

Cass heard her name resonating around the room and felt the tugging squeal of excitement from Taylor squeezing her arm in a bouncy kind of way. It wasn’t registering properly in the haze of alcohol though. The room was spinning so perhaps it was just a drunken delusional audio hallucination that she was hearing as Taylor babbled in excitement, “OMG you did it. I bloody knew it. You fucking won!”

Cass flailed around in her thoughts and tried to focus on Taylor, her vision swaying as she shook her head. “I’m kinda drunk but I’m pretty sure that annoying hipster with his Statue of Venus made out of plastic straws already won?”

Taylor laughed. “Yeah he did, lucky twat. You’ve won the Emerging Artist award. It might not be 100k but 20k is still amazeballs.”

Cass nodded her head up and down like a delinquent bobble-headed doll pinned to someone’s car dash, the wheels of comprehension trying to lock into place. “20k? Wow… really?”

Taylor smiled and with a hand on each of Cass’s shoulders spun her around and gave her a friendly shove forward. “Yeah girl, you totally did. Now go up there and accept your prize.”

Cass wobbled her way over to the MC with his perfectly pressed pinstriped shoulders and submitted herself to the daze of handshakes and camera flashes. She looked out at the sea of faces, all those walking cliche’s with their moustaches, pearls and straight-lipped smiles reviewing everything. A bunch of demi-gods the lot of them. She hated them all, and yet they had declared judgement on her and bestowed upon her the random bolt of fame.

Stumbling to the mic she crackled and stuttered her way through a jumbled mess of an acceptance speech. Totally unprepared for it she was already drowning in the harsh glare of the limelight.