by Tim Buckley
“And Lochlann’s happy with that, is he?” he asked, knowing full well that he would be anything but happy.
I thought about making up a story, but I’ve never been a convincing liar.
“We haven’t talked about it yet. I wanted to get another opinion, and…” I waved my arm towards him and smiled a sly smile from under uncertain eyelids, “… I thought you might have one or two!”
He didn’t answer straightaway, but held my gaze and let out a long breath of benign exasperation.
“You young fellas, honest to God…!” he raised his eyes to the roof. “And you should be old enough to know better!” he said, lifting his voice and prodding a gnarled, paint-stained finger at me.
“But you’ll help me?”
He shook his head. “Of course I will. Lochlann’ll have me guts for garters, but sure I can’t stand in the way of genius, now can I?!”
He went round behind the counter, brought his stool round to where I was standing and sat down.
“Right. Tell me everything.”
I told him about Hélène, about her music and about the sadness in her eyes, and I showed him the pose I envisaged.
“I want to capture the fear and loneliness of a young woman who has come here with great talent to share, but who is still a bit lost, still feels like an outsider,” I said, almost pleading with him to understand. “Do you know what I mean?”
“And why do you want to work in black and white?”
“It’s a stark message, she lives in a stark reality. I don’t think it needs embellishing.”
I stood in front of him like a man waiting for his girl’s response to a proposal. He made me wait while he mulled over my vision, his eyes once again impassive and giving no advance clue to his conclusion.
Finally he stood up.
“It’s a beautiful concept, Aengus,” he said sincerely, “but you’re never going to get it done in time.”
I should have been deflated but whether by virtue of arrogance or naïve optimism I was undeterred, buoyed even by his praise for the idea.
“I know it’s going to be tight,” I said, with a sharp cut of my hand for emphasis, “but I just think it’s the way I want to say what I want to say. I’ve thought about it, I really have – agonised even – and it’s the right style for this piece. If I can’t make it work or if I run out of time then so be it. I’d rather hang nothing than show something I’m not proud of, something out of place in an exhibition like this.”
Johnny was quiet for an age, staring up into the high ceiling, his darting eyes giving clues to the silent unilateral debates going on behind them. Suddenly, the little bell over the door tinkled. Johnny looked over and, with a broad smile, climbed carefully down from his stool and went over to welcome the visitor. They chatted for a few moments amid loud guffaws and back-slapping, and then Johnny went into a backroom and emerged with a package wrapped in brown paper and string. The man thanked and paid him, shook his hand again warmly and left.
Johnny walked back over to the stool and sat down again.
“Look – I’ve seen a lot of painters come in here, son, and fret and wring their hands just like you,” he said, his face suddenly serious and his tone business-like. “And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from them it’s this: there’s no right or wrong way to paint. You have to treat every subject as unique,” he brought the side of his hand down lightly on the counter-top to make his point, “human, animal, inanimate – whatever it is. You’re telling a story. You…” his finger prodding my chest, “…have to make up your mind – what’s the best way for me to tell this story?”
The gently drumming hand on the counter kept time with his words and he paused for dramatic effect before going on.
“Yeah, there’ll be the snobs who turn up their noses at anything that’s not oil, just like the wine snobs who won’t drink anything that comes out of screw-top bottles.”
He waved his hand with dismissive contempt.
“Gobshites. Good artists – really good artists – will use different styles for different work. They might choose to use oil or acrylic or charcoal or a mixture of all three if they think that’s what the story needs. At the end of the day, acrylic was designed to look and feel like oil and if you mix it with other stuff like retarders and glosses it really can look and feel like oil. And since the fumes from oils will give you a right feckin’ headache, most people can only work in oil when it’s warm enough to have the door open – and round here, that leaves about three days a year!”
I smiled and nodded, trying to take it all in, to let slip no pearl that could prove defining.
“Your ideas for the portrait are clear, well thought out,” he went on. “That’s good. You know your story. If you want my opinion, you might want to start it in charcoal and bring it together in acrylic. Maybe leaving the charcoal in some places to come through. If you want to give it a bit of atmosphere, you could wash it in a burnt siena acrylic, thinned with water. That’ll give it an old, almost sepia feel.”
He paused, and looked at me with raised eyebrows, as though checking that I was still with him.
“And you might,” he said, a new thought clearly forming in his head, “want to give it a splash of colour, something bright and strong – after all, in her heart, she is bright and strong, isn’t she, this girl?”
“I think so, yes. Yes, she is,” I nodded, thinking about Hélène’s angry departure and pausing a moment while my mind tried to catch up with him. “And you think I can get that done in time?”
He blew out his cheeks dramatically again.
“Look – it’ll be hard. No doubt,” he said. “But in some ways you’ve already done the hard work. Putting paint to canvas or board is the easy bit. You might be able to finish a piece in a week – but only if it’s a technique you’re happy with, you’ve perfected. If it’s experimentation you’re thinking about, you might as well pack it in now. And bear in mind that a portrait that has to look like someone in particular can take you more time. But if it’s a made-up person then it could be less. Maybe you should rethink the model?”
Apart from the Master who, to be fair, had ulterior motives and a tenuous grasp on the reality of painting, it was the first time anybody had given me both reason to believe I could produce something worthwhile in time and had given me a tangible set of instructions.
“Thanks, Johnny, I can’t tell you how much that helps.”
He waved away my gratitude.
“That’s only the start, son. The hard work comes next and now you’re on your own.”
He climbed again deliberately from his stool.
“We’d better get you some stuff to get started then.”
He spent the next few minutes pulling out brushes and palettes and cleaners and paints. He found retarders – “this’ll stop it drying too fast, give you a bit more margin for error” – and gloss – “dab this where you want sheen, the layman’ll mistake it for oil!”. Finally he disappeared one last time into the backroom and reappeared with three canvas boards.
“You might only need the one,” he said, “but sure just bring back any you don’t use. They’re small enough, but you’ll probably want to cut them down a bit. The charcoal you should already have, Lochlann got some when he was in.”
He put the whole lot in a big old canvas bag that had appeared from somewhere, and handed it to me.
“There you go now. If there’s anything you think I can help you with, you know where I am. And just sleep on what I said about the model. If you still want me to find someone tomorrow, let me know.”
“I will. What do I owe you for all this, Johnny?” I asked, looking into the bag like a child looking into an over-sized Christmas stocking.
“I’ll have to tot it up. Will I put it on Lochlann’s account?” he asked.
“No,” I said, slightly shame-faced. “It
’s bad enough ignoring his advice without making him pay for the result!”
“Well look, I’ll set up an account in your name and I’ll send you an invoice. You’re staying at Lochlann’s?”
“I am. Until he chucks me out when he sees all this!”
I shook his hand again and ignored his protests at my gratitude. I knew how close he and Lochlann were and, though I had faith in Johnny to talk himself around any of Lochlann’s moods, helping me fly in the face of Lochlann’s counsel could damage their friendship and even their business relationship.
I walked out onto Parnell Square. O’Connell Street looked suddenly longer with the big canvas bag on my back, so I hailed a taxi to take me back to the station at Tara Street.
The afternoon traffic through the city was dense and we sat in endless queues as we inched down the street. The driver was unusually quiet, deterred perhaps by my monosyllabic responses to his initial attempts at conversation. O’Connell Street was a window into a new Dublin. Earthier and simpler than the money-lined Grafton Street or Leeson Street or Baggot Street, it retained a sense of grounded reality that other parts of the booming city had perhaps lost. It was a reality that reflected the city’s losers as well as its winners. Teenaged pram-pushing mothers with sad eyes, aged vagrants with wild eyes, immigrants from east and farther east – non-nationals in Ireland’s new lexicon – with a stranger’s eyes, local lads in hoods selling fake designer bags and watches on corners with hardened, knowing eyes watching out for lurking Gardaí. O’Connell Street was like Dublin’s staff quarters.
We must encounter hundreds or even thousands of people during a day in the city, in any city or any town of any size. Even though we are from the same place and occupy the same narrow stratum of the world’s population, we will never share a drink or a meal or even a conversation with the vast majority of them just because we are so different. And we seem to shy away from contact with even those who do conform to our parameters, walking head down in the street, treating an unsolicited greeting in a pub or on a bus with incredulous suspicion.
How do we know whom we should get to know? We have access to such a tiny fraction of the human race, and yet we shut out the majority of even those who share our cities and towns. If we welcome only those already related to our circle, then the circle falls victim to inbreeding and shuts out infinite possibilities. We’re a little bit afraid of welcoming in strangers, nervous of outsiders with no references. The media has made us paranoid with paper-selling stories and high-rating exposées of conmen and the deranged who lie in wait for us at every turn. But maybe we risk more by exclusion than inclusion. Maybe we could have found fulfillment or excitement or love or friendship behind the outsider’s eyes. But we have trains to catch and friends to meet and work to do and sure how could we fit any more people into our already over-crowded worlds? Maybe we could have found a daughter.
Once back in the studio, having ensured that Lochlann was not around to witness my brazen slight on his advice, I set the bag down on the desk and began to unload its treasure. I placed one of the canvas boards on the easel and carefully pulled out the palette as though it were made of fine china. I held it and looked at it. I hadn’t had my own palette since I left university, having lost it in the move to London. It was to me what a camán must be to a hurler, a pen to a writer – a powerful symbol of my craft, albeit I had scarcely earned the right to the possessive. More than brushes which are disposable, temporary, the palette was to me the real symbol of the artist. A borrowed palette from Lochlann’s store could never have cast the same spell.
My mind’s eye picture of Hélène’s portrait now had the substance of an expert’s support, and I could see a path for the first time. Even when she had been sitting in front of me, even when I could look into the eyes that inspired my vision, I didn’t know how to make it real, how to bring it from my mind to the canvas. Now that I had that map, all that remained was to find a face to paint.
CHAPTER 17
The expletive shower that usually announced Oran’s arrival burst through the door to the gallery. He was, as the Master used to say, one of the few people who could make asking for the time sound offensive. The two labourers with him scurried out to fetch or carry as instructed, eager to escape his attention, and I wandered out into the gallery.
“Sweetness and light personified as always,” I greeted him.
“It’s all your shaggin’ fault,” he retorted, “leadin’ me astray on a school-night. I had the head from hell this morning, and I had a site meeting at eight. While you were still tucked up in your leaba, no doubt.”
“I was out for a run actually,” I said smugly.
“A run, is it? Yeah, that’s how you masters of the universe usually start the workin’ day,” he said. “I tell you, the day you have to do some real work’ll be some shock to your system.”
Anything involving a desk and a computer fell way short of his definition of work, unless it involved moving the computer or building the desk. I exhaled a quiet chuckle.
“So how’s it going with the Gallery? Are you on track?”
He looked around the empty room with a despairing shake of his head.
“No, not really,” he said. “There was a lot of work to do just to get this room up to standard – fix holes in the walls, fix a leak in the roof, replace lengths of wood in the floor that had gone rotten or had nails stickin’ up out of them.”
He waved his huge hands around the gallery to emphasise the size of the task.
“This room hadn’t been used for years. You couldn’t just set it up and open the next day.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “To be honest, I don’t think your father had any idea how much work it was going to take. If he had known, maybe he’d have pushed the opening back a bit.”
I nodded.
“But it’s looking good now, the bare room I mean?”
“Yeah, it’s grand. I give the boys a bit of a hard time—”
“D’ya think?” I interjected, and he ignored me.
“—but they’re not bad lads really. They’ve done a good job, so they have.”
He nodded like a proud father.
“But next we have to design the actual exhibition, and these lads haven’t a clue about that. Sure, how would they?”
“So who’s going to do it?” I asked.
“Lochlann, I suppose.”
“Is he not getting an event organiser to help?”
Oran rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“He’s got an exhibition manager that he used to work with, guy called O’Leary, to design the venue and organise getting the pieces in from collectors. But to be honest with you, I don’t think he has it under control at all. Maybe he was a good man one time, but I can’t see it, I really can’t. I’m no expert, but his ideas for the design are a bit…well, he doesn’t really seem to have any ideas.”
I walked into the middle of the room and turned around slowly, trying to get a feel for the shape and dimensions and the flow, trying to remember what my colleagues in event management used to do for corporate clients and their marketing departments while I designed the graphics for the venue and literature. All I could remember was that it was hard to imagine a bare empty room fully decked and full of patrons.
Oran, who had been watching with a puzzled look, suddenly let out a loud snort.
“So have you found your feng shite then?” he said, and guffawed loudly.
I smiled a concession of defeat.
“Fair enough,” I said, “fair enough. But he’s going to need some help. Especially this late in the day.”
I gestured to the door behind me.
“So they come in there and… what?”
“And those who have been invited are greeted with a glass of champagne and a programme setting out the works on show.”
I swung around to see Lochlann standing in the d
oorway, a look of curious amusement playing on his lips.
“Those who have not,” he continued, “are invited to pay the admission price which entitles them also to a glass of champagne to enhance the experience they are about to enjoy.”
I didn’t know how long he had been standing there, and I was embarrassed that he might have witnessed what must have seemed pompous and condescending.
“Sorry,” I mumbled to the floor. “I was just… Sorry.”
Lochlann looked at me, at Oran, back at me.
“I would be interested in your thoughts,” he nodded quietly, his tone suddenly serious.
“I’m really not qualified.”
“Perhaps. So, what would you like to know?”
I looked at him, at once afraid he was mocking me but wanting to believe that he was genuinely seeking my advice. I stepped carefully.
“Well, I was just wondering how the whole thing would work, I suppose.”
“Indeed,” he brought steepled fingertips to pursed lips and frowned slightly. “Where to begin?”
He came into the room.
“Well, as I said to you the other day, the exhibition will be made up of four distinct sections, or eras – Irish women of days gone by, Irish women as mothers, Irish women in new positions of influence, and the new Irish woman of today. The exhibition will be in the form of a corridor, leading from the entrance here –” he gestured to the door “– and winding through the four sections. We will have serving staff at intervals along the corridor to provide refreshments. At the end, after the final section, there will be a small open area with seats where I can give talks or seminars for groups and for the press.”
He seemed almost embarrassed by the presumption.
“The challenge is, I suppose, the construction of the route. Then the positioning and lighting of the pieces. Have I missed anything, Oran?”
“I don’t think so, Lochlann, no,”
Lochlann’s eyes turned back to me, an expectant look on his face as though awaiting some great wisdom. I searched for the right words – not because I didn’t know what to say, but rather because what there was to be said had to be carefully fashioned.