A Perfect Square by Isobel Blackthorn

Author:Isobel Blackthorn [Blackthorn, Isobel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Magnum Opus - A Next Chapter Imprint
Published: 2020-02-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Inversion

Thankfully the day was cool, for Harriet was not. Why ever had she agreed to nine? She had thought at the moment of conception that nine paintings in nine months would be easily achievable. Perhaps she had overlooked the conceptual element, the time needed for its execution. Five months into the collaboration and she had finished just one piece and had the other eight in various stages of genesis. But today was Christmas Eve, and by necessity she had been forced from the studio for the festivities. Even so, she couldn’t relinquish her preoccupation.

She was standing between the beaded curtain and the fireplace, hands on her hips, elbows thrust wide, grateful for the ventilation afforded by her smock. Her eyes were fixed on her Kandinsky piece hanging above the pianola, the interconnecting geometric shapes, the use of yellow and blue, the dominating black moon striking against a background of muted earthy tones. She saw in the work as she always did, something elevating, spiritual.

She thought for a moment. Ginny was at the local supermarket with a long list, no doubt fast approaching an even longer queue. Harriet made for the studio, sweeping through the beaded curtain on her way and returning a short while later with her one completed piece. She placed it on the pianola ledge, to one side of her Kandinsky, then stood in the centre of the Kashan rug, eyes flitting back and forth. Upon her immediate impression, she found it most strange that a cosmological model should have produced something so mundane, for in spite of all its symbolic significances, beside her Kandinsky the work appeared devoid of inner meaning. She had assumed the mapping of the Moon’s monthly round would have produced something at least a little bit profound. Instead her kaleidoscope of coloured dots aligned on a series of three-dimensional planes evoked in her no lofty emotion. There was nothing uplifting, nothing venerating, nothing remarkable in the rendition. Beside her Kandinsky, the work looked not only lacklustre but contrived.

Never had she felt more demoralised. She averted her gaze as if dismissing the work altogether, as if it, and not her, were to blame. She thought with bitter irony that her eagerness to assuage her daughter’s malaise had precipitated a crisis of her own. She imagined the opening of the exhibition, the looks of disbelief and incomprehension on the faces of guests as they viewed her paintings, and she succumbed to a sudden upsurge of energy that made her want to roar with frustration and her skin blazed with sudden heat.

She flashed the work another look and with renewed determination she resolved to improve it. Although, on the heels of that resolve tramped the same frustrating block. Perhaps it was a crisis not of colour but of form. Yes, perhaps that was it, the form contained no inner meaning and no subtlety, and the composition lacked motion and harmony as a result.

She was comforted by the thought and permitted herself latitude. After all, she had never painted this way before, never made use of a conceptual map.

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