It was disheartening to realize that for all his artistic talent, he really was quite mad.
She smiled. Maybe it was because of his artistic talent that he was mad.
After a while, she put her paintings away and cleaned up. She paused at the door, looking back before she turned off the light. The experiment had been a failure in some ways, but at least it had reminded her that she did have her own individual talent. It wasn’t all borrowed from working in Rushkin’s shadow. And one thing she knew. She wasn’t going to give it up. So long as the professor let her work here, she was going to share the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio space with Jilly and continue to stretch her own artistic muscles, free from Rushkin’s influence, for she’d come to understand over the past few weeks that she couldn’t do otherwise and still consider herself her own woman. And besides, the hours she spent here seemed to be the only time she ever felt any real peace. The only coin she had to pay in was lost sleep.
She turned off the light and the studio plunged into darkness. Locking the door, she pocketed the key and then trudged off through the snow for home.
II
Newford, February 1975
The show at The Green Man Gallery didn’t do as well as Izzy had hoped. Of the fourteen paintings available for sale, only two sold. Both were street scenes of Lower Crowsea: competent, but indistinguishable from those painted by the many other artists who used the same locale as their own source of inspiration.
“You’re going to have to put your own stamp on your work” was how Albina summed it up.
Izzy gave her a glum nod. The two of them had retired to the back of the gallery to commiserate over a pot of tea after taking the show down. In the pocket of her black jeans Izzy had a check worth a grand total of a hundred and fortyfour dollars—her share of what the two paintings had sold for, minus the gallery’s cut. She did better at The Green Man, she realized, when she didn’t have her own show, when her paintings were just scattered here and there throughout the gallery, tossed in among the works of all the other artists that Albina represented.
“What you’re doing is lovely,” Albina went on. “It’s beautifully rendered, but it doesn’t tell me anything about you. The lack doesn’t show up so much when you only have one or two pieces hanging, but it becomes quite plain over a whole show. The viewer wants more from you, Izzy. They might not be able to articulate it, but they want a connection to you. They want to know what you feel about your subject and that’s simply not coming across with your work.”
“I’m getting the picture,” Izzy said.
The In the City review had said much the same thing. The city’s daily papers hadn’t even covered the show.
Albina smiled sympathetically. “But don’t be too discouraged. January’s not the best time for a show, what with everybody starting to realize just how much they spent over Christmas. Why don’t we think of doing another one in the fall?”
“You’d do that even though this one was such a disaster?”
“It wasn’t a complete disaster.”
Izzy pulled out her check. “No, we really had some big sales, didn’t we?”
“Actually, there were a couple of other offers,” Albina said. “I was just getting around to telling you about them.”
“There were? What do you mean, like commissions?”
Albina shook her head. “I’m talking about the two paintings that you wouldn’t sell. I’ve had inquiries on both—serious inquiries for The Spirit Is Strong.”
“What do you mean by serious?” Izzy asked.
“Someone’s offered us five thousand dollars for it.”
“You’re kidding. Who’d pay that kind of money for anything I’ve done?” Albina shrugged. “I’ve no idea. The offer was made through a lawyer. Apparently the buyer wants to remain anonymous.”
“Five thousand dollars,” Izzy repeated.
It was a phenomenal sum. The most one of her paintings had ever gone for to date was a tenth of that amount.
“If we accept the offer,” Albina said, “it’ll put you on a whole new plateau in terms of what you can ask for your work. The buyer might be anonymous, but word still gets around. If you can produce more works of a similar quality, I can guarantee that your next show will be far more successful.”
“And somebody wants to buy Smither’s Oak as well?”
Albina nodded. “I have an offer of seven hundred dollars in on it.”
“Another anonymous buyer?”
“No. Kathryn Pollack wants to buy it.”
Izzy gave her a blank look.
“She owns Kathryn’s cafe, over on Battersfield Road. She said she knew you.”
“Oh, you mean Kitty. We met through filly, who’s got a part-time job there.” Izzy paused for a moment before adding, “She wants to pay that much for it?”
“Well, I’m sure she’d offer less, if that’s what you’d prefer.”
“No, no. It’s not that. I just wouldn’t expect her to pay that kind of money for one of my paintings.”
“She used to go to Butler U.,” Albina explained, “and that oak behind the library was one of her favorite places to sit and study. And probably to do other things as well. In my time we called it ‘the Kissing Oak.’”
“We thought of it as a part of what we called ‘the Wild Acre.’”
“It’s that, too. Doesn’t it bring back the memories.”
Izzy smiled. “As if you’re that old.”
“It was over thirty years ago,” Albina said, returning Izzy’s smile. “Truth is, I’ve some fond memories of that old tree myself. I think your painting’s worth every penny of that seven hundred dollars, if not more.”
“I just feel weird, selling certain paintings.”
“Because they feel like your children?”
Izzy nodded.
“I would think you’d be more pleased to have them hanging somewhere where they’ll be loved and appreciated, rather than piling up in the back of your cupboard.”
Izzy thought about Rushkin’s studio and all the breathtaking work that was in it, hidden from the world: hanging frame against frame, stacked in corners, piled up against the walls, five or six canvases deep.
“You’re right,” she said.
“So I can go ahead and complete the deals?”
“On Smither’s Oak,” Izzy said. “But I can’t sell the other one.”
“Five thousand dollars is a great deal of money,” Albina told her. “It buys a lot of art supplies.”
“I know. And it’d pay my rent for a year. It’s just ...”
She didn’t know how to explain it. Her experiments at the Grumbling Greenhouse Studio had proven to her that her art couldn’t magically transport beings from some otherworld into this one, but even knowing that, she couldn’t quite shake the conviction that John’s presence in her life was tied to the existence of The Spirit Is Strong; that as long as she kept it, everything would be fine between them.
“If you don’t want to sell it,” Albina said, “I’m not going to pressure you.”
Not on purpose, Izzy thought, she wasn’t. But it was five thousand dollars. And hadn’t Albina just finished saying that selling one of her paintings at that price would raise the selling price of all of her work? Who knew when that opportunity would arise again? Who knew if it ever would? But if she weighed her career against friendship, there was simply no contest.
“I can’t sell it,” she said. “It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the fellow who—” Little white lie time. “—sat for it. I just had the loan of it for the show.”