Brush Me Again
There is a peculiar smell about an artist. Something dusty, dry and mineral-like. But also sweet and earthy, like citrus or a geranium's leaf. It has a metallic taste on the tongue that is pungent and dizzyingly alcoholic. The blend of oils, canvas, turpentine, minerals, charcoal, paper and camel hair brushes that make up the tools of their painter's trade. I think I hated it at first, but over time, it felt like home.
No studio is ever quite the same, and yet entirely identical to every other. All the same pieces of the same puzzle, just arranged in different patterns to reflect the personality of the painter and his art. A serious man will arrange his brushes in a tidy order by some meaning known only by him. It's never so obvious as tallest to smallest, or widest to thinnest. No, it's always more complicated than that. The types of hair, the shape they are cut in, and the fineness of each bristle can make such changes to each stroke that he must know every detail before he soaks them in color and touches them to canvas.
A careless man is given to orderly chaos. Everything is in its place, and its place is wherever he set it down last. Be that his brushes, his canvas, his wine, or his women. Too much order restricts his mind, narrows his vision, and cripples his ability to let his creativity take form. He might not even look at what brush was in his hand before he begins, or even glance at his subject before starting to sketch, for his mind has already in it a vision of what he will create and he will hone it into existance by will alone.
Olivier was neither serious, nor careless. He was something that existed in a clandestine space between the two. Attentive, quiet in manner, speculative, intuitive, given to an artist's flights of fancy, visceral, and tranquil – I never really knew what to expect of him. There were days in which I modeled for him that he would talk almost without end as he worked. And never about the same thing. He'd speak of great cities around the world that he had traveled, discuss the philosophies of prodigious thinkers at length, and espouse the great religions and mythologies of the many peoples and cultures he had encountered – whether in his travels or in books. The written word is the only thing he ever loved as much as his paintings.
Other days he would speak very little, or not at all. There would be no black mood or dark cloud over him, no fit of despair that robbed him of his voice. He simply went silent. Nothing needed to be said, and so, nothing was. I had to learn to read his expressions, determine if a look meant to move my body to the right or to the left. If a nod was to lift my chin higher, or to tuck it down toward my chest. Sometimes it would be a flick of his wrist, a gesture on the air with his brush, like a conductor leading his orchestra.
He transferred his desires as well with his body as he did with his voice. One with the exquisite grace of natural carnality in motion, the other with a restful timber as soothing as warm silk. Each held me equally as hypnotized as the other, mesmerized into a perfect stillness that lasted hours at a time. He said that when my mind calmed and I became still, my body spoke to him, told him how to position it, and what colors to use to tell the story it wanted told.
One afternoon, something was amiss. Olivier was in a silent mood, but he was unsatisfied with every stroke of his brush and every color on his palette. He tried to direct me, and I tried to obey, but his frustrations quickly became impatience. Finally, he threw down his palette and his brush and came to me. He'd never touched me before. His hands were work-roughened and calloused. His touch firm, unyielding, but not unkind. Like a sculptor molding his clay, he moved me, folded me to his will.
Piece by piece, limb by limb, from the tilt of my chin to the set of my shoulders, to which of my breasts to lay bare and which to cover with a gossamer stole, and how that fabric of light and air should drape across my naked form. He set the turn of my hips, stroked a deeper curve into my spine, meticulous and exacting. Down even to the placement of my hands and the way my fingers should curl into my skin. There was no part of me his hands did not caress. No segment of flesh too sanctified, or too offensive, to stifle the boldness of his wishes.
He stepped back then and looked at my face, and then my body. His scrutiny was unhurried and exhaustive. There was no curve, dip, or hollow that he did not inspect. He seemed pleased with all but the position of my right leg. With two fingers he tapped my knee and I moved it to the right. He frowned, tapped my knee again, and I moved it left. A frustrated hand dragged through his hair and I watched Olivier pace back and forth across his studio. Stymied in his effort, that creative current that was the life's blood of his soul was mired into uselessness, and he prowled like some great beast ensnared in a trap.
Suddenly, he stopped. Turning on a heel, he marched back to his canvas and brushes and he raked through them all until he found the one he sought. Determined, he returned, and sank to one knee before me. With the tip of his brush, he touched the inside of my thigh, where the skin is warm and soft as cream. The lightest touch of camel's hair.
My leg moved, a tiny fraction of a flinch, and then I heard it. That inner voice of my own body. It whispered to him with a yearning that silenced my heart and pilfered my breath. A sweet, soft supplication…
