Imagine That

Dundee had been painting for about 10 years. He wasn’t an artist, but he had been painting for that long. What he really was, was a patient. He had been forced to retire 20 years ago for health reasons. He was a heart patient, a cancer patient, a diabetes patient, and high blood pressure patient. He had almost died twice and had been placed on disability from the government and was waiting to die. I suppose you could say he was in fact a professional patient. He watched TV for the first ten years and finally decided that he wasn’t being productive, that he had wasted ten years of his life, so he taught himself to paint. It seemed that he wasn’t going to die after all.

He painted portraits for three years, nothing but portraits. He loved peoples faces; they were so telling. He painted portraits in imaginary settings, of imaginary people, with imaginary smiles, and imaginary glints in their eyes. His portraits hung on his studio walls. There were 30 portraits, hung without frames, one next to the other in a line all along the top of one wall.

He would turn the lights on high in his studio and sit in his recliner chair, with his feet up, and analyze each painting, remembering what he was thinking when he painted this, or what he was thinking when he painted that one. He had assigned each painting a name that matched the look on the person’s face. Although many of the people were smiling, they didn’t look like happy people. There was an eeriness in the room as his portraits stared back at him. Sometimes he wished they weren’t there, that he hadn’t painted them, but didn‘t have the compulsion to take them down. He thought out loud, that he was simply not being productive.

He branched out and purchased books about famous artists: books about Vermeer, and Albrecht Durer, Van Gogh, and Michael Angelo. He read books on practically every artist and style that existed and tried to paint like all of them, in many different styles, with some success I suppose you could say. His paintings were quite good actually.

Dundee thought even though he was not an artist, if I could sell some of his paintings, he might receive some recognition as a painter. Being 60 years old, he made the realization that he would never be an artist, but quite simply a “patient.” Artists had degrees in art and years of training; he had nothing but his artwork as proof of anything.

Deciding to sell a couple of his painting, he looked for a small gallery that might take them. He went to a gallery in the city and approached the owner. She said that she would be happy to take the painting and try to sell them. Several weeks afterward he brought two small still life painting to the gallery. He stood before the owner of the gallery with a painting in each hand and explained that he’d talked to her about the paintings before and that he had brought them for her to see. She took a business card from her desk and without looking at the paintings, handed it to him and said they didn’t have space for them at this time. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

It had taken him a great amount of soul searching to muster up the courage to try to sell his paintings. He was very unsure about the quality of the paintings and wondered if they were any good or not. Embarrassed by the rejection, he was humiliated. She could have just as well stabbed him in the heart. He returned home totally dejected and depressed. She hadn’t even looked at the paintings.

He tried several galleries with the same outcome: Total rejection. Not knowing what to think about this, the only thing he could assume really was that the paintings were not good. Should he be embarrassed about these paintings? He stopped trying to sell the paintings, rationalizing that if he sold the paintings, chances were they, after a time, would wind up stuck away in someone’s basement, or in the trash, never to be seen by anyone. If he kept them, at least he had proof he had painted them.

There were over a hundred paintings by this time. They covered every wall in his studio from ceiling to floor and corner to corner. Sitting in the studio was surreal for him; it was like looking at his mind, displayed on the wall. Practically every thought he had about art was on display. He sat in the imaginary world of his studio and imagined that he was happy, but he wasn’t.

Dundee had met several people over the years who called themselves “artists.” All but one had degrees in art. He thought if they could just see his work, perhaps they could discuss it, analyze it together. He imagined what the conversation might be like. After inviting them over to his home and taking them into his studio, he waited for their comments.

They walked silently around the room, and one of them finally said that he certainly had a lot of paintings and there were a lot of paintings about Jesus. He said yes that he supposed there were. That was the extent of it; nothing else was said. Not one compliment was uttered. He had seen their work and had been extremely complimentary of it. Would it have been so difficult to say something nice about his work? Dundee promised himself that he would never compliment another artist about their work ever again. Once more he supposed the paintings were not of high quality.

Ten Years. . . For what? What had been the reason for spending ten years of his life, painting art work that nobody ever saw, or if they did see it, didn’t like it? Or even if they did like it, didn’t have the common decency at least to say “nice work.”

He continued to paint but took his time now. There was no rush to get on to the next painting and he felt the excitement and passion was gone from it, painting I mean. It had taken ten years for his enthusiasm to die - But die it had. One of his current paintings had been in progress for over a year; another, six months.

Dundee talked to god about his painting and asked him why he had allowed him to continue with something for so long and have absolutely no success. God didn’t answer him.

Last Christmas, Dundee’s wife bought him a computer. It was something he had asked his wife to do for him. He planned to put pictures of his paintings online, because he thought someone might see them.

By chance, he stumbled onto a website called “Critiquecircle.com.” It was a workshop for writers. Writing short stories was something Dundee had done as a child. He became a member.

Dundee began critiquing stories that he read online. His critiques were rudimentary. He loved many of the stories he read but was very reluctant to say anything negative about any of them. He wrote stories of his own and submitted a few to the group and had several in the works. The critiques of his stories weren’t particularly good and he figured he had a lot of work to do. He was told by one member that he needed to work on the ‘mechanics’ of writing and that he needed to read more ’serious literature,’ in order to see how really fine stories were written; he assumed this member was referring to his own stories.

Working diligently, revising story after story, he became more skilled at writing. The critiques became more positive and it was said by other member that his stories were bordering on being almost proficient. He worked on the ‘mechanics’ of his stories, concentrating on grammar, spelling, punctuation, character development and story line. He received the feedback about his writing that he had never been able to receive about his paintings. It didn’t matter to him whether his stories were published or not.

He still held out hope that one day he would receive the recognition of his paintings that he had hoped for. But now . . . Dundee sat in the surreal, imaginary world of his studio, at his computer, painting pictures with words, writing imaginary stories, with imaginary settings, about imaginary people, with imaginary smiles, and with imaginary glints in their eyes . . . He was happy . . . It seemed that God had answered him after all . . . Imagine that . . .