Stay: Gallery Again

I walk up to him, biting my bottom lip the way I do when I'm trying to suppress a laugh. He's sitting in the "Stay" room, easel set up in the middle of the room holding a large canvas. He focuses so intently on his work that he doesn't notice me come in to stand beside him. I barely touch his elbow, and he jumps a little. He looks up at me, beaming when he recognizes me. He starts cleaning his brush on a pure white cloth. 

"What do you think," he asks, nodding his head towards the painting. 

"I like it," I reply, attempting stoicism when really I'm fit to burst. A single eyebrow tells me he doesn't believe me. "Well, it's not finished yet," I try to cover. 

"Exactly. It's not finished."

I realize now as he's cleaning his brush, staining the once-soft white cloth with pigment, the part I play in making sure those pigments meet canvas again. He gets up and walks away, leaving me with the unfinished work. It's larger than the others and even though it's not finished; it's an instant favorite. It's different from the others, markedly so. Yet, the style is the same. The strokes were all applied with the same hand. The colors in their infancy will contain the characteristics of their precursors. I look at it, displayed on the starkly-simple light wood easel in the center of the room, away from the lights that illuminate its siblings. Even in the shaky shadows, it still outshines the others. 

Looking at the collection around me, I want to curl up in a corner and set up house. I love this collection more than all the others, even the ones I should love more, the ones anyone would guess I did love more; but this one is my secret. I never want it to end. There's no reason it should continue, but secretly I always want a working easel in this room. In it's simplicity and quiet, unassuming beauty, it's all I've ever wanted but thought I could never have. 

Reluctantly I remember that all rooms have walls that must connect and end. 

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."