Saturday, February 14, 2009

Writing Prompts: art show, eight, driving, emptiness

Walking into the art show and glancing around, she saw the blue and black paintings suspended from wires. There were eight of them, some hanging from balcony railings, others from horizontal ladders attached to the dark gray ceiling.

She knew he had painted them in the last weeks of his life, before his cancer had confined him to his bed. In those days of immersion, he had been driving himself day and night, to secure the images to the canvas, to release his demons to empty himself of his past. It had been twenty years of painting for others, commissioned work he learned to despise, yet it paid the rent.

These images were his. They had come flowing down his arm, through his brush and onto the surface.

She has watched him, stopping by each day, chatting a bit, giving him moral support, bringing lunch. The both knew the end as close. He was racing against time. This was his legacy, and as the last of the paintings was finished, she could see the emptiness in him. He was done.
Within days, he took to his bed. She cared for him that last week, yet also began to arrange for this show. She knew wherever he was, he would appreciate the display, and the appreciation so far, of everyone who had visited the gallery.

She closed the door and began wandering around, surrounded by her father’s last works.
Jyoti

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