Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

‘Is this how you see me, Ellie?’ he asked. ‘An empty shell? Not really there?’

‘ No . Don’t be ridiculous. I just painted it that way because—’ And I trailed off. I could not explain why the notion had come to me. When I tried to, the words came out so unpersuasively: ‘I don’t know, I thought it would make for a more interesting picture, that’s all. Obviously, I see you as a person. Bloody hell. I see everyone as a person.’

‘Do you see any connection between this picture and your life in general? Absences and what have you?’

‘Yes. Fine. You caught me out. I was thinking of Jim, OK, not you.’

‘That wasn’t quite my point.’

‘I know what you were getting at. And I’m still not comfortable discussing it.’

‘All right. We’ll move past that for now.’

I huffed. ‘It’s just me trying to be less ordinary. I don’t want to be so literal with everything I paint — that was Jim’s problem. He had good ideas but he stopped himself exploring them.’

‘We aren’t here to talk about Jim’s problems.’

‘Well, it hardly matters. I’m still not abstract enough for some.’

‘Who’s said that about you — not abstract enough?’

‘It wasn’t said , necessarily. Just implied.’

‘By whom?’

I tried to look unfazed by the memory of it. ‘There was an important show a few months ago, at the RBA. Situation , it was called. You probably heard.’

Victor shook his head. ‘I don’t get out much. And when I do, it’s only to the squash club.’

‘Well, Dulcie was pushing to include one of my pieces, a diptych I made last year. But they wouldn’t have it in the show.’

‘Why not?’

‘I have my suspicions.’

‘Such as?’

‘Doesn’t matter. They liked the scale of it, but seemed to think it was too figurative. They said my references to mountains and what have you were a bit too clear and they were after something different.’

‘What were they looking for?’

‘Pure abstraction, I think. No obvious representations of reality, just gesture.’

‘I see.’ Victor was still holding the portrait up in both hands, but he nodded at me in such a way that I expected he was itching to scribble something down. ‘And that made you feel bad, did it?’

‘At first, yes. No one likes rejection.’ I smoothed the creases from my skirt and gazed into the window. The snow was skeltering down the pane. ‘It’s really picking up out there again.’

‘But now you feel differently about it?’ Victor said. His professionalism could be so irritating at times — I was never allowed to deflect from a sore subject while we were in session.

‘Yes. Now I feel much worse.’ I smiled. ‘Look, they didn’t take Nicholson or Lanyon’s work either, and a lot of others they should have, in my opinion. So I got over the rejection side of things quickly enough — it happens and you have to deal with it. But then I went to see the show.’

‘Ah. Not very impressive?’

I just stared at him. ‘Sometimes, Victor, you’re so far off the pace it worries me.’

He set my sketchbook on the armrest and glanced down at his watch. ‘You’re saying the show was good, but it left you deflated in some way.’

‘In every way.’ I threw up my hands. ‘I mean, there I was, surrounded by all of this outstanding work — stuff that really pushes at the limits of what painting can do — and the only thing I could think about was the pile of rubbish I’d left back in my studio. I felt ashamed, if you really want to know. That these artists were so brave, and I was so desperate to be ordinary.’

‘That word again,’ Victor said. ‘You use it a lot.’

‘Would you prefer average? Middling? Mediocre?’

He gave a small sigh of indifference. ‘Let’s talk about your pieces for the January show. You’ve been going through the motions with those, you said.’

‘Yes. God. How many times do I have to repeat myself?’

He ignored me, thumbing towards the sketchbook. ‘And that’s how you approached the portrait here, too?’

‘ Yes .’

‘But you’re not being truthful about that, Ellie. You told me — hang on, I’d hate to misquote you—’ He leaned to flick back through the pages of his notebook, one-handed. ‘ That’s just me trying to be less ordinary. Not be so literal. Isn’t that what you just said?’

‘Well, I didn’t think you’d be transcribing every last bloody word when I was saying it. Is this a courtroom now?’

With this, he eased off, reclining in his chair, softening his stance. ‘My point is, what you’ve made for me here is by no means ordinary. I’m not in it, for a start. That’s fairly unusual for a portrait, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It depends on your frame of reference.’

‘All right. Fair enough. I don’t profess to be an expert on art. But I can tell the time well enough: eighteen minutes and forty-one seconds. That’s how long it took you to complete it. And you showed no obvious anxiety behaviours as you were painting it. So, I’m left wondering if it’s the act of painting that’s been causing all your apprehensions, like we discussed, or if it’s something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘I’m not sure yet. We need to talk that through a bit more, but I’m confident we’ll get there,’ he said. ‘And I think it’s probably wise to keep you on the Tofranil for now. It appears to be helping. Unless you’ve any objections?’

For once, I had no answer.

‘Good then.’ Victor leaned to make one last scribble on his notepad. ‘I think we’ve made terrific strides today already.’

Staying away from the Roxborough in January proved difficult. I managed not to be there for the hanging of my paintings, letting Dulcie and her deputies ascribe the order to the turgid mess I handed them. When the private viewing came around on the 14th, I stayed home, knowing they would make me stand beside my wretched work for photo opportunities and give interviews all night about the (lack of) thought behind them. Still, there were so many quiet afternoons in the weeks after, when I was tempted to drop into the gallery to see the paintings in situ , hoping the sight of them in this context might somehow redeem them.

In the lead-up to the opening, Dulcie had posted me the text for the show’s catalogue, seeking my approval. She had commissioned a foreword from a writer called Ken Muirhead, a fellow Scot who had commended my previous show in the Telegraph. Of my new paintings, he wrote this:

[. .] these muted, reflective compositions mark a departure from her bracing early work and show the clear maturation of her talent. Building on studies of the city from one fixed vantage point, Conroy presents New York as a constellation of tiny human acts occurring in slow motion. In her hands, what should be scattershot and frenzied becomes reposed, serene. A view of life as though from the stars.

I was almost hypnotised by the language in this paragraph, but I resisted it. Clearly, Muirhead had failed to notice the sheer apathy that underpinned the paintings, how poorly I had gone about the task of executing them, how knowingly I had let them be carried from my studio, one after the next, like meat leaving an abattoir. And then it struck me that Ken Muirhead and I were one and the same: factotums, glad to dash off work for the cost of our subsistence. I agreed to the text and sent it back to Dulcie without comment, thinking nobody would ever take such drivel seriously. She called me after the private viewing to tell me, ‘Ken was rather sad not to see you there. He said he’d never wanted to meet an artist so much in his life. And he doesn’t even know how pretty you are yet. We ought to set the two of you up. I don’t think he’s married any more.’