Stay: Gallery

I've learned to keep my hands behind my back in galleries. You could press your nose to the piece of work and not get in trouble, but once one of your fingers escapes, the guards descend on you like vulture. For once, I'm glad I have to keep my hands locked behind me. I don't want to touch a thing. 

It's a large gallery, with lots of rooms and corridors with labels like "Childhood" or "Recurring Themes." Some corridors never end, while some rooms are unfinished: blank spaces on bone-gray walls, spot-lights waiting to illuminate colors--at once I shudder to think that these rooms are unfinished, thinking that someone has already exhausted their subject-matter. Some rooms are entirely empty. In one another painting is being hung. In another I observe the artist applying new strokes of color to his work, a part of the process. 

I go through each room slowly, examining each piece. I disagree with some: the colors are wrong, they are too graphic or too honest; they stab me the wrong way in the gut, or the chest, or the throat. They mix the sublime and the grotesque. A few make me walk away. 

Not this one, though. This one makes me smile, faintly yes, so you couldn't tell unless you knew me. It's a smile reflective of the painting that evoked it: small, inconspicuous, but filled with light and meaning and emotion. The colors are simple but poignant. The scene is casual and quotidian. The characters appear so common at first sight they could have been cut from a catalog. It is, in almost every way, an insignificant piece; but I stop and stare for awhile anyway. 

A man strolls up next to me, but rather than looking at the painting that so transfixes me, he turns his gaze on me. "What do you think?"

"It's perfect. Who's the artist?"

"I am. I did all the paintings in this room." 

I suddenly wake up to look around and recognize the series. 

"It starts over there," he points. 

I walk to where he indicated, "I can't believe it all started here." I walk around, shaking my head, looking at each one. They form a story, these seemingly insignificant snapshots. 

"Is it over," I ask when I reach the last in the series.

"I'm not sure," he responds, "for this stage at least, for this collection. I think we might repeat some of these scenes though. What do you think?"

"I hope we do, " I answer quietly.

"You sound like you doubt it."

"I do."

"Well don't. I want to keep painting."

"And I want you to have reason to."

I start to walk away, but turn just before I clear the door, "What's it called, this collection?"

"Stay."