The Artist

I am sitting quietly on my wooden rocker. The sound of the wind astounds me as I watch the stars, just emerging as if in mystic troops above me, in the rose-purple sky. From here, I can see the horizon clearly; shades of orange, pink and violet appear as beautiful as a painting created by a masterful artist, an artist who lives behind those cavernous cliffs, up on the ethereal clouds.

The artist has managed to meticulously clash all these beautiful colours—one against the other, almost opposites shades in the spectrum—to create the perfect image of dusk; the kind in which light blends into darkness creating ‘the dawn of the night’ as some call it. I have known people who have believed that each day is special, a creation of his divine hands, crafted into existence on leisurely afternoons. I have known people who have worshipped the artist for all the splendour he’s bestowed upon our world, and those who have always believed the artist hides in his mythological abode, invisible to all, their only reverence to him being their belief in his existence.

I too have known an artist, very much unlike the one who paints the sky and fuels the sun. I have known an artist whose words don’t rhyme at all. I have known he who doesn’t know art and has no secret hideout. He is a dreamer and his dreams are all masterpieces, unleashed, one after another, in the gallery of his mind. He is my artist; the solemn deity I worship.

I remember the very first time we met. It was a frosty December day, painted in sepia-tones; dull decor for such a great day, as far as I was concerned. The artist I met soon painted my heart in startling hues of red.

Incapable of fathoming the depth of these colours, I dived into his ocean completely. And he stood by my side, resplendent in his artistry.

Everything about him—his tufts of curly black hair, the non-coherent streaks of misery on his face—asserted that he existed for a purpose. The adoration in his eyes, ever so slight, hints of rogue colour almost, always managed to take me by surprise. My heart pounded inside my chest as I looked into those eyes. No sooner would his eyes stop looking at mine than a gust of nervousness would sweep me away. I couldn’t get rid of those fine strokes of pink blush he painted on my cheeks then. “Will you let me walk by your side?” he asked and I could not say No.

He had been an artist on the verge of creating his finest work then. An artist so adept at hypnotising his subject that his mere presence could enrich the latter’s existence. I was glad that he was the artist who had managed to run his magic brush against my cheeks. I, his subject, had been hypnotised, enriched. Walking by his side, I dwelled on the beauty the moment. “If only there were no goodbyes,” I thought as the wide road ahead of us branched and we inevitably separated.

My artist didn’t come to find me again. He visited my dreams though; wearing those brown-sapphire eyes that reflected the deep oceans and vast skies. He had painted my fantasies in the galleries that hid beneath those eyes. I would never see the brown-sapphire again and yet continued to worship the artist who had painted my cheeks pink. The rest of the world, however, adored he who could sweep the harsh cold away and hand humanity its spring.

The sky turned an eternal blue and the sun shone golden bright but I continued to think of my lost artist. After months of waiting I realised that my own canvas was blank. I was a mere subject, a forgotten subject. The red with which my heart had been painted on the cold December day seemed messy already but I couldn’t do anything about my dreams, about the artist’s nightly visits. I would have to learn to abandon them silently.

If I could lend words to my dreams, they would rhyme like a beautiful sonnet. If I could paint them, they would come out as beautiful rainbows—happiness and love in every colour. As a document, they would be no less than fairytales; as songs, they would be beautiful duets. I would be the artist then, and he my subject.

But those dreams haunted me. My subject never showed up and I, the artist, did not know how to get the colours right.

If it were love I was experiencing I would paint it red. I would flood my heart with blood and smash it right into his dreamy eyes. If it were hate I was experiencing, I would paint it dark, muddle the sapphire sky with black and create the darkest night ever. If it were longing I was experiencing, I would paint infinity; conceal all the emblems of space in white.

The months continued to swirl past. The invisible artist from heaven continued to enchant the earth; his magnificence reflecting in the paddy field as the golden grains swayed in the wind and the emerald reflected from the damp earth. And I continued to splash red and black, day after day, night after night. Never did I realise that I couldn’t mix colours for there was no artist inside me. I was merely stroking blanks with my brush; driving my longing for him into unfathomable pain.

“But I can weave words; words of love, tragedy and longing,” said the voices inside my head one day. “I can make a fable of that December day when a young girl met a dreamer. I can paint sapphire and sepia in words if not colours; I can tell the tale of how a girl fell for an artist. And on that day, when it’s done, I can go and find him.”

I knew I would struggle with a heap of words. “The fable would not sound like a song if I messed up.” I had to create a masterpiece and present it to him. On the day, when I would meet him again, he would paint the fable for me; he would stroke his magic brush over my cheeks and enrich life with the colours of love.

I happened to walk through the same street again when the artist in the sky howled in agony. He was roaring in anger, dissipating his tears. With an umbrella in one hand and my fable in another, I watched the sky. I stood on the same spot I had been standing on when we had first met. How the sombre artist living behind those clouds had transfigured the sky into a war-field; there was clangourous thunder and there were rusty brown fumes.

It was an outburst following a tragedy. Had I not met my artist that day, my fate might have had something similar in store for me. But he was there; a dream-like apparition smiling at me. “You disappeared for so long. I have been waiting for you here,” he said, with a tint of sapphire in his eyes.

“Why did you not come to see me again? All the while I have been waiting for you, on my street,” I told him. I had acted idiotically; instead of trying to find him, I had been waiting, like a mourning widow for his arrival. “I have always believed an artist runs after his subject,” I told him, to hide my embarrassment. I wanted to smash the red from my heart right into his eyes but instead I asked him if he could paint.

“I can’t. I’m not artist. But I can sing,” he said.
I smiled back. “Can you sing this fable for me then?”

- Sumi Thapa