VAN GOGH by Nelma Ward

(Note: The following story was the result of a 10 minute writing exercise during our last meeting. The writer was asked to incorporate the following words: Van Gogh, a studio, bread and water, knife.)

The studio, filled with half squeezed tubes of paint, canvases, piles of paper, looks chaotic.

It is my refuge. Here the voices in my head subside when I pick up my palette knife and spread the paint. Bright vivid colours, huge splashes and streaks, and when I step back a little I see that I am making something beautiful.

I may live on bread, dry and a day old from the village bakery, but I feel rich. I finally have silence and solitude to do my work, for this is work, this putting down of colours and shapes.

I take a long drink of water and walk around a bit. Tomorrow I will take my board and charcoal and go out into the countryside of Brittany and I’ll start on drawings for the yellow cornfield, with the blue hills, and blobs of dark green trees, which will be my next painting. Good colours together, those. Yellow, blue and green. And if there aren’t any, I’ll put some red poppies and little blue wild flowers in the foreground.

That should be a beautiful painting. But I imagine when its done I’ll just store it against the wall with all the others. I have paintings of pine trees, and billiard tables, and stars, and chairs, lots of chairs. No one will ever buy them I know, but unless I paint them, put them down on canvas, I am haunted by them. Its not good to be haunted.

My brother Theo wants me to rest, not to think, to sit, but I can’t do that. I need to make these things. I show them to people sometimes and they’re shocked. Too bright, too wild, they say. A painting should be a nice well mannered thing, pale and contained. Perhaps if my brain was pale and contained that’s what I’d paint. No, no market for them. They’ll just stay here forever I guess, stacked against the wall.

© Nelma Ward