The Artist

Maybe he knew. 

Maybe he was really painting himself. Some preparatory process for the upcoming journey. 

He stepped back from the canvas, removing his spectacles and wiping a smear of paint across his face. A painted man on and off the canvas. 

A dour visage stared back at him through lightless eyes. He dabbed his brush into a pigment he lately created, a deep henna brown. Shadows cut across the image. Foundations. Slowly came the ghostly image of a child, looking back towards what was lost. Highlights would come later. The light-dab that told the sad tale would fall last, a final concluding sentence. 

Where, he wondered, was he looking? Towards what? A question that would linger, long after he finished this work. 

Night fell, and light sparked in the adjacent room.

He washed his brushes, running his fingers through the oily bristles. Then he turned from the canvas, the absence of northern-facing light casting his studio in blue hues. A child’s musical giggle filled the doorway. The little boy held a toy, a model train in his tiny hand. He waited for his grandfather, shifting back and forth on his feet.

Taking his grandson’s hand in his, he walked towards the light.

* * *

(This story is inspired by Nightfall, one of N.C. Wyeth’s final tempera paintings before his untimely death in 1945. For more background, see https://collections.brandywine.org/objects/11505/nightfall)