XII

assion, for all the talk of science and order, still fuels the artist. Creative energy is formed of desire and a possessed drive to realize, to manifest a thing. It is as selfless as a mother, as possessive as a lover.

Passion does not determine the content nor direct the composition but it invigorates the artist.

Passion invokes the painter with courage to take risks. It fills him with energy to work harder than he'd ever imagined. It takes more work than a painting is worth at the outset but that effort soon rewards the crafter with a manifestation of greatness that justifies even greater application. Thankfully, the creative spirit thrives on success and as beauty and art begin to be realized, there is energy to finish it as required.

Passion for beauty and for genius, for Beatrice who personified these ambitions for me, drove me to endeavor to create a portrait of this woman.

Down in my parent's basement, I was couch inclined one summer afternoon and abusing the television remote control when there upon the screen was the image of Beatrice. She was performing with piano accompaniment in a small, dark local studio. There might have been a handful of viewers tuned in. They would have been family, friends, friends of friends, and me. T'was a fortunate happenstance and I would not click the remote to find a different destiny. I dove instead for the VHS recorder.

Captured!

I had my cellist ensnared now and it was not in a manner that affected her at all. No Collector, I.

In that stale environment and through videotape, the performance lacked the magic. There was no resonance with my soul. Her passion did not exude from the small screen. The sound and performance seemed somehow hollow. It wouldn't do. She deserved more. The small screen did not express her. I resolved to prove that her presence could, done properly, be communicated through a medium. Cold I capture the passion?

The easel went up and the paint box fell open. The turpentine and oil fumes began to fill the enclosed space of the rec room. Paint poisons may contribute as much to the imaginations of artists as passion ever did.

The brightly white canvas stared back at me with a challenging, taunting air. It was not the empty board that alone dared me to be great. It was a pale veil behind which Beatrice, ghostly white, gloweringly appraised my worth.

Sienna, cadmium red, and ochre yellows were her palette but also faded green might colour her intense gaze. The hues would carve out brilliant oranges and red-browns in a suite of fiery energy. Indeed, it would be a furnace. In the center of the frame, steady and strong, Beatrice commands the cello in a solid, Sybilian pose.

I would depict the musician only from the shoulders up, not allowing myself the luxury of representing movement by gesture. Amid the dance of reds and yellows, the resonant blue of her dour décolletage anchors the piece.

The maiden's eyes are downcast but it is not passive reverence or contemplation. She is intently focused upon the instrument but also looking past it. She will not meet the gaze of the viewer. No, she has no time for spectators. This moment was not for spectators: it was for music.

The music of colours sing about Beatrice's passion yet it is not simply the play of bright colours that would enlist an 'ooh' from the viewer. Instead it is the transitions and expansions from the tones of her feminine flesh, highland hair, and the dark timbre of her cello. The interplay and exchange of naturally appearing chromatic scales range together in splendor.

It is but the neck of the Sienna hued tool that strives toward the upper right third of the composition from the base. The strings are not straight but angled at the tension points where her powerful, playful fingers push and press upon them. White against the stark dark, these foreign lines speak of rigidity. They are slightly askew parallels against an otherwise chaos tossed background.

The hand is blurred and fragmented, quite unfinished in parts, unable to be frozen in place by any physical or natural order. The splayed fingers defy static anatomy as they reach and beckon simultaneously.

Yet it is again the forehead and the holy temples of the subject that dominates the foreground. It is her consciousness that is almost pushed forward of the canvas by the energetic frenzy of those colours.

If the painting is bold, it portrays a fruition of the passion that filled me throughout the creation.

Even as my still subject was stabbing bow to string, my brush was a careening and blazing thing, gliding through the thick, pliant surface of the oils. Rising wakes of paint would form amid the passing of the paintbrush hairs. A landscape formed behind it of crimsons and enriched umbers with hills and vales where once the painter's tool had passed in impassioned decision.

All through this process, as I worked to bring the power of Beatrice to life at my fingertips, the tape of her performance would play and play again. The chords haunted and informed every pass, every press and turn of the brush.

I was not passive in the process. I danced before the easel. My head and shoulders would twist and turn. My hands would sweep and sway as I strove to see clearly the flow of the composition and more to imagine and plan the exact arc and pressure of the upcoming stroke of the brush. It was a conductor that stood before his orchestral pit of paints.

The background is not simply a sea of colour. It is a tidal wash of tones that shift with the ebb and flow required of the foreground. The dreary decor of the studio wherein she was recorded was transformed in my painting to some cavernous stage of vibrant light. Vibrancy surrounds her in life. It is an aura. For all the explosion of color I employed, I in no ways exaggerated her halo.

While I toiled upon this task, my younger brother, Duncan took my place on the sofa. Bemused, he sat through one round of the tape but he did not remark upon the quality, which indicated to me, at least, that he found her playing presentable enough. In no way did I expect that Beatrice would imbue everyone who saw her with this same sensation. She was no messiah for masses. This was particularly true of her translation on videotape.

While watching my own performance, Duncan and could but shake his head and snicker. I was stepping back to peer and forth to paint and rolling with that dictates of design. Painting is not a great spectator sport.

I was obliged and this time to justify my excitement for this woman to my family. I had to confess that I knew little of her and that she knew so much less of me. One thing though stood up in my defense, excused my obsession, and perhaps rationalized it. It validated my otherwise perverse passion and allowed them to understand a bit more of my self.

XIII