Page 1 of The Artist's Rival

1

TATIANA

To accompany the sky’s rumbling thunder, Tatiana Khan’s brushes fall to the floor. She bends to pick them up, weary from work. The still moist leftovers of paint on their hair splash all over the wood, creating vivid bursts of color.

“Ah, Pollock,” she sighs.

Grabbing a wet rag to clean up the mess, she shakes her head at the overused joke. The yellow paint stains her fingers, slimy and yolk-like. Wanting to get up, she reaches for the table’s support, inattentively leaving yellow marks behind. A sign to finish work, she nods. I am leaving behind trails of sun, she recites, trying to remember the poem without success.

Making her way to the bathroom, Tatiana has to jump over her crumbled messes, belongings laying in strange combinations. Tangles of clothes stretch and curl, intertwined so tightly and chaotically that one could mistake them for lovers, sprawled around the wooden panels. The fabrics seem almost to breathe, in and out, flowing with the animal rhythm of deep sleep. She likes the image and reaches for her sketchbook instead of the bathroom door.

She draws a stormy riverside, maybe abandoned. Women, wanting to wash their clothes, could be driven away by the harsh weather; they have left in haste. Out of their baskets dark shirts and undergarments must have fallen, tossed about by the wind. The tumbling materials stretch out on the sand, wild, unintelligible. Their outlines speak to an animal quality—when she draws them captured in motion, their sleeve limbs appear to run. Here and there, the sketch is marked by traces of warm yellow paint, still stuck to her fingers. Satisfied with the idea, she leaves the sketchbook on the floor, determined to finally wash her hands and rest.

The switch clicks and a flood of bathroom light hits her eyes with a piercing harshness, putting in spotlight the toothpaste-stained sink. Solitude seems to double Tatiana’s tendency to forego cleaning. It also seems to triple her artistic potency, which is how she has been justifying leaving sinks cluttered, floors littered, and bedsheets unchanged. She can easily disregard caring for her space when she thinks of it more as a studio, rather than home. Sometimes she wonders whether her unwillingness to rent a space to paint truly comes from financial motivations as opposed to her liking this state of intimacy with art, unseparated from her private life and overflowing in every room.

–

“Come on, Terry’s playing tonight!” Connie shouts on the phone.

It’s pouring heavily, and Tatiana looks out the window in resignation. She shivers, thinking of stepping outside into the mud, bathing in evening rainwater.

“The weather’s horrible,” she says, all the same slowly letting go of her plans for a peaceful night inside.

“Good thing the club has a roof,” Connie concludes, hanging up with a brief, “See you there!”

With no heart to dim her friend’s excitement, Tatyana begins dressing up to go. Stumbling over piles of belongings, she manages to dig out some clothes of dubious cleanliness. To remedy the uncertainty, she buries her face right in, smelling only the reassuringly delicate scent of the laundry detergent. Notes of vanilla stroke her skin as she shuts her eyes close, preparing to face the unpleasant air outside.

Tatiana, now ironing her shirt, craves to feel the hot steam with each lifting of the iron, trying to get all the warmth it can afford her. She doesn’t tolerate cold weather well. Each year, unable to contain her excitement for spring, she ends up spending too much on summertime clothes, later lost in the pits of her wardrobe. Linen dresses and light cotton underwear wink at her seductively from every spring clothing collection.

In childhood, this aversion towards winter often sparked good-natured teasing from her parents, entertained to see their daughter grow up far from the freezing land of her grandfathers. A child who doesn’t know the true winter, they’d laugh.

Driving to the venue, she yawns, but is glad to be going out. Ever since parting ways after art school, she and Connie rarely spend time together, torn between careers and bigger or smaller loves. Without Connie and other friends, Tatiana would probably lose her sanity. Working on her art for hours in solitude makes her mind tender to sound and light. To create, she must exaggerate each state of feeling, letting it flow onto the canvas. Whenever a wave of inspiration hits, she refuses to pause, afraid of affecting the quality of her creation. Afterwards, even though satisfied, she often finds herself weary of her own thoughts, sensitive and estranged from conversation. An animal in a cave, she muses. Friends are often an artist’s saviors.

The radio remains turned off, letting the gentle sound of rain fill her car with its simmering, static noise. Little droplets hit the windshield bringing back images of hours spent driving around in the backseat of her father’s car, filling her mind to the brim with a familiar, nostalgic fog. Racing rain drops, swimming down like thin veins, inspired a ton of her early drawings. She stops, seeing the vibrant light of the club’s entrance dance around through the streaks of water. The strokes of light dissolve in her relaxed eyes, colors blend into each other. She sits still for a moment, taking in the impressionist beauty of the scene.

–

“Terry, congratulations!” She embraces the young man, taking a seat by the bar with Connie, watching him get on stage.

Terry is a perplexing character, entirely unsure of what path he wants to commit to. The only consistent thread in his life, as far as Tatiana can tell, is his love affair with music. As long as he’s on stage, he seems to be doing fine.

“So… He no longer plays the piano?” She leans in to whisper to Connie’s ear.

“No, No. He prefers wind instruments now. Tonight, it’s the trumpet.”

“How does he even do that?”

Connie chuckles, light-hearted. She has a delightful chuckle, sweet and chiming like small, high-pitched bells.

“It’s the curse of being young, Tat,” she explains. “They’re good at everything and can’t choose anything.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Tatiana responds, turning to order a drink.

Deep down, however, she’s pondering her friend’s words. Terry’s constant indecision seems foreign to her. As a child she knew what drew her in, and in a self-perpetuating cycle of practice and praise, she was certain she had found her true calling. Granted, she always felt blessed to be graced by the guidance from her parents, sure to be by her side as she kept working on her craft. Of course, she gave other visual arts a try, but always circled back to pencils and brushes, finding that these infrequent departures only deepened her relationship with painting. In photography, she found self-expression to be too limited for her taste, nonetheless learning from it the importance of light. Light entered her paintings like a phantom, setting the ambience of the entire scenery. Not many people pay attention to light while admiring a painting, even though that is its main component. Her father made sure to teach Tatiana sculpture; his eyes tearing up as he watched her chisel the way into the stone. Working with such an unforgiving material taught her invaluable lessons, infusing her own art with a persistent appreciation for form. From each art she could borrow from, she did, but always faithfully making her way back to the love of her life, painting.

At the opposite end, there was Terry—a tangle of aspirations and talent out of which something resembling a troubled artistic soul emerged, playing for pennies at bars and picking up girls after each show. For now, Connie was the girl for him, just as the trumpet was the instrument. Whatever he’d play next will probably replace the trumpet, just as soon as his infatuation with Connie will come to pass, replaced by another girl, Tatiana is sure. At least for him the pool seems infinite, she concludes, slightly bitter. In the artistic community, queer women seem to be caught in their own webs the moment they step in, and everyone is somehow tied to one another, entangled in sticky webs of longing and memories. Back in college, Connie and Tatiana used to have late night conversations spinning until morning hours, comparing their lives.

The band starts playing, and the chatter quiets down, making the few surviving conversations more sharply defined. The strings of singular voices tingle Tatiana’s ears, making it impossible not to casually eavesdrop. She’s not feeling very passionate about jazz music.

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