In my last blog post I wrote about my death struggle with a tiny painting of a Nemesis. Things were indeed looking pretty bad with that painting until suddenly, sometime toward the end of November, I stepped back from my easel, paintbrush in hand, and realized I’d completed a masterpiece.
In other words, I WON!!!
But it turned out I only sort of won… the plot thickened a couple of days later. You see, a college student asked to visit my studio and interview me for an art class. That sort of thing happens to me a lot, and it’s not usually stressful. Students want to see what the studio of a working artist looks like, so there isn’t a lot of prepping on my part. But this time, as the hour neared for the student to arrive, something in my atelier felt shadowy, flim-flammy, not quite right.
While I scanned my workspace with anxious eyes, trying to make sense of the matter, my phone rang.
The caller was a painter friend of mine who visits my studio a lot and agrees that I won the Nemesis battle. “What are you up to today?”
“A college student is visiting my studio and interviewing me for a class assignment,” I said. “They’ll be here any minute now.”
“Well then, I won’t keep you on the phone. You need to get ready.”
“Oh, I’m ready. There’s not much to get ready.” My eyes suddenly rested on the Nemesis. “Except I have this nagging feeling I should hide the Nemesis. I feel like I should protect the student from it.”
“I agree. You should keep that thing under wraps and be very careful how you show it.”
“But it’s a masterpiece,” I said. “It feels like my Mona Lisa. Why would I hide it?” As soon as the words spilled out of my mouth, I gazed into the eyes of the Nemesis and shivered. “Omigod. I’d better hide it.”
“Go. Do it now. Call me later and tell me how the interview went.”
I hung up the phone, grabbed the Nemesis, and hid the painting in my art storage closet.
The interview went well and the student turned out to be amazing. I called my friend after the interview and we agreed I’d done the right thing when I hid the Nemesis. In short, that was that, and we all lived happily ever after.
Except as usual, I wonder who’s running things around here…me or my paintings?