The Painter by Tom Lowe

Author:Tom Lowe [Lowe, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KIngsbridge
Published: 2020-09-19T20:00:00+00:00

FORTY-ONE

A week later, they met in the gazebo. Catherine was already there when Michael arrived five minutes late. She was dressed in the same blue and white sundress he’d asked her to wear. She wore her hair over one bare shoulder, skin tanned, spotted sunlight breaking through nooks in the gazebo and falling on her face. She looked up and smiled. “I know you wanted me to wear the same dress as you start and finish the painting. What if I were to wear a sundress one day, my favorite faded jeans and T-shirt the next day, and then wear a 1920’s Victorian dress the following day? Maybe I’d wear a red raincoat the next time. How would you paint me?”

Michael laughed as he sat down across a small wicker table opposite Catherine. He looked out into the garden and then back at her playful eyes. “I’d begin with your face … the beauty and mystery of a woman alone with her thoughts in a secluded garden. If I can paint that, it doesn’t matter what you wear … because that’s the most important thing to me as a painter. After that, it’ll all become part of a coat of many colors. When I combine that with the acres of flowers, the water and sky … I’ll need a large canvas.”

She laughed. “You want to paint the mystery of a woman alone with her thoughts. If I tell you too much about me then, the mystery will be gone, and maybe part of your incentive for doing the painting as well.”

“Never. It will become even more intriguing. At that point, I’ll have to choose how much to reveal, and that will be an artistic and personal challenge.”

She hung her purse strap on the back of a wrought iron chair next to her. “It sounds like you’re a movie director deciding how much of the character’s personality you’ll reveal.”

Michael smiled. “There are comparisons. When Derek was teaching, he used to talk about how well impressionist painters, like Renoir, could reveal personality traits in the faces of ordinary people doing ordinary things but with remarkable expressions. It was the faces, the appearances of the people in his paintings, that caught your eye and demanded that you take a closer look and peer deeper into those faces. That’s what I try hard to do.”

“And, you do it well. But I feel there’s an incongruity in what you leave on canvas and what you leave with people.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your paintings are shimmering with stuff of life, the human existence. But, after spending time with you, watching you with others … you seem very reserved. Are you an introvert? I believe I am. However, I’m not sure an introvert is the real you. I figured if I was going to be spending time with a man trying to capture me in paint, I’d like to know more about him. So, I did what any curious woman might do … I googled you.” She leaned forward, wide smile spreading.

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