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Laura Volkening Things We Used to Do Exercise: Critique All three of my sisters paint. We used to coddle each other during our critiques, saying to each other I love the texture, and the colors sing. We were taught this from our mother, who whispered words like feathers in our ears at night. How lucky she was to have such gifted girls. We’re all in our final year in grad school now, Elise the youngest and Marguerite the middle. I guess after my fourth year applying, Tyler finally decided they would want me. Elise got in no problem and Marguerite took a year break in the middle so here we all are, competing for the same fellowship. Hoping that they’ll come up with two more for all three of us to have and spare us the trouble of loans and debt. Elise paints like Pollock. Paint dripping into fantastical images that escape you until she steps away, covered in cadmium red and ivory white. Marguerite paints like poetry. Her figures so realistically portrayed, the windows and tables so real that you see more than the even and well blended skin tone, but instead it’s as if you can feel the person breathing, your hair moves with the wind when you see it. We all share a studio space at the college. I guess they thought it would be interesting to see what the sisters would create when in the same space. Well, I guess they were right, because when I take off my smock and see what has happened on the canvas that day. It is neither mine, Elise’s or Marguerite’s. I used to paint with a cubist influence, figures abstracted, legs disjointed and faces hard to determine. But now I paint as we. My under-layer, figures like that of Vermeer, and comparable to Caravaggio, but only able to be seen through a dripping and smeared coat of paint that just looks like Elise’s side spatter.


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