I wish Kevin would joke with me, but he’s caught up in making sure the motor attached to his mock-up is working.
His piece, Unresolved, is unique. Fifty narrow strips of canvas flip in random patterns so the painting changes every sixty seconds. Mathematically speaking, there are hundreds of ways to experience it.
Next to this, my study feels mundane. It doesn’t matter that I’m a better painter. Kevin’s challenged the limits of painting.
Now it’s Kevin’s turn and I shift from foot to foot as Krell questions him about color choice and directionality. “Are the two sides opposing forces or are they meant to reveal aspects of one another?”
I envy the way Kevin answers so calmly.
The last thing Krell tells him is, “Watch your execution. There’s a real danger your piece will be perceived as cute or gimmicky.”
Krell pauses to scribble in his little leather notebook, and Kevin wipes his forehead on his sleeve. He gives me a look. That was brutal.
“You’re up,” Krell says, turning to me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spy Bernadette behind him. She’d walked away when Krell critiqued Kevin, but she’s back, vulturing over Krell’s shoulder.
He comes around the easel and I resist the urge to pick up Julie and hold it to my chest. Krell peers at my painting. “This is the homeless woman who stands out on Raymond.”
“Yes,” I say, surprised he recognized her.
“You’re romanticizing the homeless.” His voice is thoughtful, almost concerned.
“I didn’t think I was doing that,” I say quietly. “I thought I was capturing who she is.” I hold up her photo and he takes it from my hand.
“Ms. Reyes, it is not enough to capture a person’s essence in a portrait.”
I try not to sigh. The hours I’ve spent with his painting have given me a sense of what Krell means. His portraits aren’t literal portraits, but if I had to explain why they work, I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, but I don’t get what else I’m supposed to do.”
I expect Krell to smirk and say something cutting, but instead he nods. “Think of it this way: Portraiture should force the viewer to contribute their own perceptions. How can you involve the viewer? Make them fill in missing information, question their assumptions about the subject, examine their prejudices?”
He hands the photo back to me. “You can render Julie perfectly, but how will you get people to really look at her?”
I stare back at him, thunderstruck. For the first time, I understand what Krell has been trying to teach me.
“Study portraits by Willy Steam, Francis Bacon, or Cindy Sherman,” he says. “Steam, especially. You can’t walk by one of his paintings without trying to fill in the blanks.”
“Okay, yeah, I’ll do that.”
“All right, then. Good start.”
He moves on to Bernadette, and I let out the breath I was holding in. At this instant, I feel as if the barrier between me and what I need to learn is lifting. My grasp is slippery, but I’m beginning to sense where I need to go from here.
What Krell told me to look for in Steam’s and Bacon’s and Sherman’s work is what he does in his: arrests the viewer and gets them to question the story.
Now I have to find a way to do that in mine.
Across the room, Bernadette nods at Krell, her face serious. Her painting’s uncovered, and I make out the figure of a man formed by hundreds of small brown paint strokes on the white canvas. What? I move closer, and goose bumps shoot up my arms.
What I thought was brown paint turns out to be thorns. Actual thorns.
“What you’re doing with this piece,” Krell tells Bernadette, “embodies CALINVA’s artistic mission.”
Questioning. Provoking. Agitating. Crap, he loves it.
Bernadette notices me behind him, and the smile she gives me feels like a challenge.
Everyone’s been talking about the awards the faculty gives out after the exhibition, and how the instructors select a student to mentor based upon their work.
I wind my way over to Taysha. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Bernadette a stone-cold killer?”
Taysha cocks her head at me. “All-star girls’ volleyball champion three years running.”
“I should have seen that coming.”
“Leopard can dye her hair pink, but she can’t change her spots.”
Adam tried to warn me about my peers competing for the faculty’s approval. I return to my easel, my neck prickling.
Class ends and people start packing up. Kevin carefully rests his prototype in a cardboard box lined with foam. “You know what you need to do for Krell?” he asks.
“Yeah, I think so.”
He shoves out his fist and we bump.
I need to look at Krell’s painting in a different way—to look beyond the layers of color and brushstrokes for how Krell relates to the person he’s painting and what he wants to say with his art. If I can figure out why he does that, I can get there, too.
I put Julie away, and before I walk out, I text Adam. SURVIVED KRELL’S CRITIQUE
KNEW YOU WOULD—TAKING RISKS PAYS OFF.
Yeah, sure does. If I hadn’t spent hours staring at Duncan, I’d probably be hopelessly confused by what Krell told me to do today. I’ve got another week before Krell’s painting leaves his studio, and I need to use that time well.
My painting can’t just be good. It has to be extraordinary.
I thought Duncan was a window into Krell, but it turns out it’s not exactly transparent. The next few nights, I puzzle over what he is saying with his art while I try to capture Duncan with my brush.
Duncan is part of a series Krell’s painted in which the faces seem to disintegrate, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t explain why his faces shed pieces like autumn leaves. Trying to figure out what’s in Krell’s head feels like trying to see through milk.
And when I ask Adam what he thinks, he tells me I need to discover the answer for myself.
Krell could be saying anything, so I search through interviews and academic journals, only to discover that he refuses to reveal why. “Look at the work,” he tells every critic or journalist who asks.
Saturday is supposed to be the day I fix my painting, but when my alarm rings, a thought pins me to my bed. If I can’t figure this out, I might as well give up trying to be a real artist and go back to making dog portraits.
I force myself to get out of bed. I throw on Mom’s old kimono and scuff into the kitchen. Mrs. Mednikov looks up from her Paris Match. “You do not look well, Sabine.”
“I’m tired.” I take a bagel out of the bag and stare at it. It’s too much work to toast it.
“You should go back to bed.”
“I can’t. I have to work on my painting for the First-Year Exhibition.”
“My art was my medicine,” Mrs. Mednikov muses over her coffee. “When I danced, I forgot the pain in my feet and my aching back. I would lose myself in the music.”
Her story could be mine. “I used to lose myself in my painting. But not lately.”
“This instructor of yours, he’s made you doubt yourself.”
“He makes me question what I’m doing.”
“It is good to question, but deadly to doubt. You cannot leap if you are afraid to fall. That is how you get injured.”