Page 13 of Painting Celia

A gleam in his eyes, León paused his work and turned to her. “All right. Say you’re painting a flower. Not a poisonous one, just a regular pansy.” With his brush, he drew a circle in the air, waiting until she nodded. “It’s in a flowerbed against a house. The light is pale and delicate and gray. It’s dawn.”

She could see what he was describing.

“It’s a cool morning, and dew is clinging to its petals, a bit too heavy. The flower is bowed down under the weight. Its stem has little hairs on it. You can sense its thin trembling leaves fluttering in a breeze.”

Poor little flower.

“But the sun is coming, as it always comes. That’s a truth. The breeze may dry it, the dew might drop away, or the sun will warm it. All the flower has to do is stay strong until then.”

Of course. The picture could show the sun coming around the house, or a tall shadow receding. “I can see that!” she said. “You could show those physical details in one image, but they tell a story. They are a story.”

He nodded. “In an abstract painting, you don’t show the flower itself. You play with the physical details. The color of the light, the tension in the stem.” His eyes stayed with her instead of his work.

His smile was nice.

“If you don’t have a story tonight,” she finally asked, “how do you know which details to show?”

He stood back to consider her backyard, then the canvas.

“There’s the blue pool against the sky’s orange. Cool versus warm. Close versus far. This will probably be about contrasts. I still need to find the story, though.”

This was fascinating.

“Then the colors,” he said. “The pool is aqua and lacy whites. The city is dark purple with spangled oranges. The pool is flat and still, and the city is flickering with small stars.”

“Contrasts,” she breathed. “All the opposites. I never looked at it that way, and I’ve looked at this view for six years.”

“And that’s a contrast, too,” he grinned. “Old and new views. All the hidden stories and shapes and colors.” He stopped. “Oh.”

“What?”

“Hidden.” He turned to look around the yard, lowering his tools. “This view is hidden from the road outside.” He turned back to the canvas, large gaps of unpainted space awaiting him. “Look, Celia. The white canvas with spots of color. It’s your kitchen cabinet with the mugs hidden in it.”

He began to paint furiously, with no hesitations.

Six years. She’d gone all the way through her art list, six years of classes, and León saw this magic in her backyard in one day.

He painted in silence as the last of the golden light slipped away, and she watched.

This was art. This was what she had to learn to do. Pluck sights and sounds from life and say…what? She needed a story too. She hated to disturb the whispers of brush marks being made, his economical movements in the cooling blue dusk, but she had to know.

“Where did you learn this?”

He leaned in to inspect a detail. “Art school and practice,” he said. “This is how I see things. I have to paint to show people what I’m seeing and thinking.” He glanced at her quickly, face indistinct as the sun slipped below the ocean. “You have that art list. You’ve taken a lot of art classes by now, right?”

“Classes didn’t teach me how to do that.”

He stepped back and folded a rag around the top of his brush. “Well, they can’t. It’s unique to each person. You create your own process.” He wiped his fingers on the outside of the rag, eyes focused too directly on her again.

“Could I learn how?”

The challenge on his face was clear, even in the dusk. “Why do you want to make art?”

She’d said she would tell him.

“I think art might save me.”

“Yeah.” He finished wiping his fingers. “Me too.”

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