Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

He had a hold on her that went beyond their student-teacher relationship and she knew it wasn’t healthy. She admired him tremendously, for his talent and his insight and his dedication to his art, but he also seemed to mesmerize her, and in so doing, exacted far too much control over her. His moods ruled their relationship, and she often got a headache trying to second-guess what he was thinking or how he would react to even the most innocuous comment or incident.

It had taken all her courage this morning to bring up the question of taking some of her work into a gallery, and even so she could only approach it by a circuitous route.

“So I thought maybe I’d do that,” she went on, “because I’m really broke and I need the money to get an apartment.”

She kept expecting him to explode into one of his rages, but his features remained a bland mask. His apparent calm fed her jumpiness, making it increasingly more difficult for her to go on, never mind actually come right out and ask him what she wanted. In the end, all she could do was stand there beside her easel, fiddling with a cleaning rag, unable to finish.

“And how is it that I enter the equation?” Rushkin finally asked.

“Well, the only paintings I have that are any good—that I think are any good—are here.”

“And you want me to help you choose which ones to take in?”

Was it going to be this easy? Izzy thought. Unable to trust her voice, she nodded in response.

“What was the name of the gallery again?”

“The ... Green Man.”

“I see,” Rushkin said. And then he said the last thing she’d been expecting. “Well, I think it would be an excellent venue—not so highbrow that your work might be diminished in comparison to that of their more established artists, yet with enough of a reputation to insure that the paintings will be viewed with some seriousness.”

“You mean it’s okay?”

“Your ability has been progressing by leaps and bounds,” Rushkin told her, “and I think you are due some recompense for the dedication you’ve shown to date.”

Thank god she’d caught him in a good mood, Izzy thought.

“Besides,” he added with a smile. “I can’t have you sleeping in alleyways. Think of what it would do for my studio’s reputation if the word ever got out that I drove my best student into penury.”

The morning took on a surreal quality for Izzy. From Rushkin’s actually cracking a joke, to his helping her choose and frame a half-dozen paintings, none of it seemed real. It was as though she’d strayed into an alternate world where everything was almost, but not quite, the same. She wasn’t complaining, though. The Rushkin of this hypothetical other world was such good company that she wanted to stay here with him forever.

Still, obliging and good-natured as he was, the old Rushkin hadn’t entirely disappeared. The choices he made seemed so arbitrary at times that Izzy couldn’t fathom what his reasoning might be. More than once he would pass over a preferable painting for one that Izzy knew was clearly inferior by comparison.

The ones he picked weren’t bad by any means; they just weren’t the best of what she’d done.

“What about this one?” she dared to ask, when Rushkin set aside the painting she’d done of the oak tree outside her dorm at the university. She was particularly proud of how it had all come together, from the first value sketches all the way through to the final painting on canvas.

But Rushkin shook his head. “No. That one has a soul. You must never sell a work that has a soul.”

“But shouldn’t they all have soul?” Izzy asked. “I mean, to be any good?”

“You confuse painting with heart with a painting having heart. Artists must always put the whole of themselves into their work for it to have any meaning—this, I think, we can agree to be a given. But sometimes a painting takes on a spirit of its own, independent of what we have brought to it. Such works require our respect and should never be treated as a commodity.”

Izzy looked around the studio at the vast array of Rushkin’s paintings that hung from the walls and were stacked in untidy piles throughout. “Is that why these are here?” she asked.

Rushkin smiled. “Some. The rest are failures.”

“I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to produce ‘failures’ like these,” Izzy said. Rushkin made no response.

“Why don’t you show your work anymore?” Izzy wanted to know. The air of easy companionship in the studio this morning was making her feel bold. “I’m no longer hungry,” he replied.

“But it’s not just about making a living, is it?” Izzy said, shocked at his response. “That’s not why we do this.”

Rushkin looked at her with interest. “Then why do you paint?”

“To communicate. To share the way I see the world.”

“Ah. But to whom do you communicate? Or rather, which is more important: your viewing audience—those potential purchasers—or Art itself?”

“I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying. How can we communicate with art?”

“Not with art,” Rushkin said, “but the spirit of art. The muse who whispers in our ears, who cajoles and demands and won’t be silent or leave us in peace until we have done her will.”

He gave her an expectant look, but Izzy didn’t know how to reply to that. She knew about being inspired—what most people meant when they spoke of a muse—but Rushkin spoke as if it was an actual person who came to him and wouldn’t let him rest until she’d gotten what she needed from him.

“You’ll see,” Rushkin told her after a few moments.

“What’ll I see?”

But Rushkin was finished with that conversation now. “It’s a good thing we’ve had you working in such standard sizes,” he said. “I think I have finished frames for all the pieces we’ve chosen. Help me bring them up from the store-room, will you?”

Izzy knew better than to press any further. She followed him downstairs and they spent the remainder of the morning framing the paintings Rushkin had chosen and carefully wrapping each of them for transit.

“How were you planning to take them to the gallery?” Rushkin asked when they were finally done.

“My friend Alan’s waiting for me to call. He’s going to drive me over.”

When Alan arrived, Rushkin helped them lug the paintings down to Alan’s car. He shook hands with Alan, wished Izzy good luck, then disappeared back into his studio before Izzy had time to thank him for all his help. She adjusted the paintings in the backseat of Alan’s Volkswagon one last time, then got into the passenger’s seat beside him.

“So that’s Rushkin,” Alan said as they pulled away from the curb. Izzy nodded.

“He’s not at all like what I expected.”

Izzy glanced over at him. “What were you expecting?”

“I thought he’d be more like that drawing you showed me of him last year.”

“Like it how?”

“Well, more grotesque, I suppose. I didn’t realize you’d done a caricature.”

“But I didn’t do a caricature ...”

“Whoops,” Alan said. He gave a quick embarrassed laugh. “I guess I put my foot in my mouth this time, didn’t I? Look, don’t pay any attention to me, Izzy. What the hell do I know about art? Hey, are you and Kathy really planning to get a place on my block?”

“If we can afford it.”

She let him steer the conversation away, but she couldn’t get what he’d said out of her mind. She knew that all artists had blind spots in how they perceived their own work, thinking it better than it was, or worse, but she hadn’t thought that she could have gone that far astray when she’d redone her sketch of Rushkin last September. Granted, she hadn’t had him sitting in front of her the way he’d been in the original drawing that he’d taken away with him when he left, but still ...