BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

Lara Smith

In an Artist’s Studio

IT HAD NOT BEEN the most pleasant journey: the carriages were full, so we took our place in between them, leaning against the walls that shook with each churn of the train’s wheels. The station we arrived at was just as busy, but I would have expected nothing less from a city like London. The novelty of the Underground had long since faded for me. People were always unfriendly, always rushing, but my friend did not seem to care as he held the printed tickets in one hand and a handrail to steady himself in the other.

Although this was not usually how I spent my typical Saturday morning, I was more eager than I had anticipated to look around the art gallery my friend had taken me to. The rooms, I must admit, occasionally blended one into the next but there was something strangely enjoyable, and yet pretentious, about ‘talking art’. It was not until we reached a later room that I wanted to pause in front of a painting and stand there, feigning philosophical thought.

Out of all those self-same faces, I first saw hers. She stood, perched on her lover’s lap with a red scarf slung around her hips, alluding to the divine outline of a feminine figure. I noticed her reflection in the mirror behind, and the sunlit garden which her gaze was fixed upon. If she had turned around, perhaps she would have seen me too, but I have my doubts for her eyes were drawn to the salvation awaiting her outside that open window.

In all that amaranth purple and the black-bean red of the armchair, it was as striking as it was unnerving. A deep-set displeasure arose in me for the man’s ostentatious beard, and vulgar, velvet topcoat. Her hands were folded in her lap, and one of his reached out towards them. The room itself was carelessly unkempt, a discarded glove on the floor which I assumed would fit only his oleaginous fingers.

The placard named her an ‘uneducated barmaid’, yet I could not quite connect even that aspect of her humanity to the rosy cheeks and auburn hair. It was as if she was only preserved within that painting, condemned to oil and a life of being looked upon by artists and critics, and men. To imagine her as more than that moment felt like some sort of strange transgression against the natural way of things.

Still, I remained there, suddenly aware that perhaps I was the critic, or similar to her lover, who sat back with arms around her waist, devouring her presence with greedy and possessive hands. Perhaps I too consumed her – not as she was, but as she who filled my dream, and my every desire. I breathed in her very existence – eyes blind to the symbolic glory of her surroundings because how could I look away? I wanted to see what she saw, and then I wanted to see what he saw in her.

My friend’s voice brought me back. He soon began picking apart every detail of that painting, from the red of her scarf, to the loss of innocence signified by the reflection in the mirror. There was a story, and I let him relate it to me. I could have impressed him with my knowledge of the artist’s sister and her sonnets, which became renowned as some- what proto-feminist, despite her anti-suffrage beliefs. But I doubted the word ‘suffrage’ meant more to him than on an intellectual level and I had never truly appreciated art anyway, so I let these details wash over me. We had a gallery to see, and I was sure there would be better paintings.

And yet, when I turned to face him, and his eyes met mine, I thought of that auburn-haired woman and then the sonnet. How did it go again? He feeds upon her face by day and night, / and she with true eyes looks back on him. He was looking at me, and I was sure I was watching him watch me.