Page 12 of Sawyer
He’d hoped to capture that in the perfect landscape, but it wasn’t nearly good enough.
Dammit!
He set aside his blue pastel and picked up the white again, shaking his hands to loosen them as he studied those clouds. God, they were like shapeshifters, changing in the cool wind that prompted him to tuck up the collar of his light winter coat.
It was time to get practical. He had commissions. He had offers for more. People wanted him to do gallery shows. How was he supposed to do any of that, if he couldn’t bring himself to finish a simple sketch?
He sliced his pastel again in the air, cutting away the clinging cobwebs of doubt and despair.
Sketching a bit more, he looked at the sky. How had Monet captured clouds so brilliantly? Even after writing a dissertation at Georgetown on the famed Impressionist, Sawyer had no idea how to create the effect on a technical level. He groaned, prompting a few curious tourists who’d edged close to watch him to walk off, thank God. Thinking about Monet probably wasn’t a smart move with all the philosophers in his head yammering about destiny.
Sketching quickly, he tried to let his mind go, let his hand simply fly like the nearby seagull. But his inner critic—and his mother’s ever-enduring question—told him the blue he’d used for the sky hadn’t captured its brilliant cerulean essence.
He did some more slicing at the air with his pastel, making him probably look like a crazy person to an onlooker. But who cared? He had a vow to keep and a quest to continue on.
He’d hoped coming to his favorite spot and creating would arrest the anxiety crushing his chest. He adored Paris. The city capturedeveryone’ssoul. Even New Yorkers, as Brooke liked to say. It had captured his from that first mind-broadening trip his parents had taken him on when he was a young boy, already enrolled in art class. The first time he’d seen Monet’sThe Water Lilies, it had made his head explode. He hadn’t spoken for days afterward, wandering around with his eyes wide and mouth open as they took in the Louvre and every other noteworthy museum and work of art Paris had to offer.
He needed to paint up to that standard.
Or die.
He threw his pastel into his art box in disgust. God, he really was being dramatic. Or maybe he was having an artistic tantrum. Wasn’t Michelangelo famous for his? But thatwasn’t how he wanted to roll. Plus, if he kept this up, his Paris roommates would schedule an intervention.
His whole life, he’d ached to create art and be noticed for it. To be recognized while he was alive, unlike great masters like Van Gogh, who’d had to wait for death to be recognized.
Now he had his chance, yet all he could feel was the old agony. How could he love something so much and yet never feel like he did it justice?
Another Voltaire quote intruded:The heart has its own reasons that reason cannot understand.
He studied his sketch, grabbed another pastel, and started again, determination as strong as the iron in his blood.
While he drew in the woman in the red coat across the quay, he reminded himself of the new truths in his life. He had a reputation now, as well as people to back him, including his Paris roommates and Axel. He had a few commissions with more pouring in. Soon he would have an agent and his first gallery showing, although that baby felt a ways off. He didn’t have enough paintings. Most shows averaged around twenty-five to thirty, and each one had to be a masterpiece.
Doing one was complete agony now.
More negative thinking. He sliced through the air with his pastel, banishing it.
His art now graced Nanine’s walls. People were clamoring to see what he’d put on canvas. And wasn’t that where the scary, anxiety-filled emotions came from? People were going to see his truth.
His thoughts.
His feelings.
His very soul.
And with his mother’s nagging question in his mind—is it good enough?—he knew he was struggling with the worst human dilemma. Washegood enough?
He slashed through the air so violently he almost fell into the Seine.
“Sawyer! Are you okay?”
He turned toward the voice. Thea. “I…ah…was batting at a mosquito.”
She wobbled on the cobblestones in the two-inch brown boots peeking out from under her long rose-colored wool coat. “It’s these cobblestones that make me worry about stumbling into the water. Which would be awful, don’t you think?”
He nodded before inclining his chin to Jean Luc, who cut an equally fine appearance in a camel-colored wool coat with a black pinstripe suit under it. He was a man who could quote the old philosophers, one of the qualities that made him a rare lawyer: one with a soul.
Perhaps it was the whole being in love thing, but they both looked like they’d spent a weekend in St. Tropez. Sure, they’d left the party early last night, Thea being an early riser with all her baking. But perhaps it was the notoriety of her breads and the anticipation of her new bakery that had her looking so radiant. He wished he could be that easy with himself.
