Beyond the Color

By Kenneth Dube

 Brush...dab...stroke...dab, dab...brush, smoosh. "Hmm...no, the green should be lighter. Would that look right? Let's try this. A little blue here. Ah yes, cool blue. Spread it out a bit. That upper area just doesn't look right. Ehh, I'll do that later. Back to the green."

Ringgg. "Huh? Oh, the phone. Darn it! Oh my God, what time is it? She's going to kill me."

"Hello?"

"Hi Andrea, it's Peg," she said. "Are you ready?"

"Hi," Andrea replied, "you're going to kill me."

"What?" asked Peg.

"I'm not ready yet," she said. "I kind of got caught up on a painting. Why don't you go without me? I'll meet up with you later."

"All right," said Peg.

"I still have to take a shower and all, you know," Andrea apologized. "I'll see you there later, okay?"

"All right," said Peg. "Bye."

"Bye."

Andrea completed a few brush strokes from the last thought she had and then cleaned up. She quickly showered, fed the cat which had been following her around since the phone call, and rushed out the door with only getting to the tea party on her mind.

Music and conversation filled the doorway as she knocked. Patricia opened the door with heightened surprise.

"Look everyone," she said, "Andrea's here."

"Hi," she uncomfortably announced. "Sorry I'm late. I got caught up in something."

"Don't worry about a thing dear," comforted Patricia, one of the ladies sitting on a couch. "Have some tea and a muffin."

Mechanically, she sat down on the end chair and shared a hot cup and a crumbly snack. Her friend Peg was sitting across from her. Their eyes met and Peg nodded to her. The group consisted of artists, all female but one, and mostly older. Andrea was the youngest, with Peg a few years ahead of her. They got together once a week to discuss their art. The group consisted of four painters and three sculptors.

"To form my ideas with my hands," the male whose name was Gordy said, "that's the only way I can feel in touch with what I do. I would never feel the same passion about my work if I had a tool between it and me. But that's just me, of course."

Gordy was close to Peg's age. Andrea sensed that he didn't feel totally comfortable being the only male in the group. He showed up every week, though.

"The brush focuses what comes out of me," retorted Rita, one of the older painters. "It takes what is big and complex and captures it into a tiny brush stroke."

The conversation moved from what drives them to create, to who the great teachers were and to what is the closest one could get to perfection. Gordy got into a heated discussion with Andrea at this point. Everyone knew of Andrea's unorthodox style, but they felt she had the right skills and would straighten out eventually.

"Color has no place in art," he started. "Art is pure. White is purity. That's how it has always been. Creativity is black and white. Color is a sign of weakness. It shows unsurety. It's too undisciplined."

"Who's to say that ideas should be represented by only two colors," Andrea came back. She knew she was becoming to emotional about it, but she could not hold back. "There's got to be more. Color oversteps the boundaries. It reveals more levels of consciousness."

"The greatest minds before us developed the best structure there is," he answered. "It's the closest to perfection you can get. Any deviance from it brings you further away from the truth. How can I sculpt an idea that is orange? It looks worse than it would white. The black adds perfect balance. Orange or blue or whatever else it is you use would make it look sloppy, like an unskilled and unartistic being made it."

"She's not sculpting though, she's painting." Broke in Peg at the defense of Andrea. She didn't agree with everything she did, but she felt that Andrea was doing something right even if most of it was confusing to her. Besides, she was her friend.

"I don't know," Andrea finalized. "It's hard to explain, you know. I know its right when I do it, but when I'm here talking to you it's hard to explain. I don't know."

"Why don't we have more tea," broke in Patricia. "It's so delicious. Don't you think?"

It was opening night for the art gallery's 12th annual art exhibit. Everyone from the group was displaying except for Patricia. At her age, she enjoyed taking in what the younger ones did rather than trying to create for show, herself. The evening was a success. Everyone was ranting and raving and it was said to be the best exhibit yet by some tip officials.

Gordy's display was the talk of the evening. His featured masterpiece was a sphere surrounded by two smaller spheres. They were mostly white with black on one side at the perfect proportion as taught by by the masters of art in the past. He had simply outdone himself this time.

Peg was toasted also. Her painting expressed pure tradition. She used short brush strokes to create a white sphere surrounded by infinite blackness. Andrea was happy for Peg. She knew Peg had worked hard on her painting because they had often spent many hours at a time together painting. Peg wasn't sure how to feel. She was deeply happy and at the same time, she felt bad that Andrea had failed to get any good reviews.

Andrea had spent most of the opening alone and to the side, just watching everyone. She was happy for everyone else. She knew they deserved every bit of attention. She didn't know what to think about herself, though. She had thought that this was it. This time it was to be the highest form of experimentation ever. So she thought. No one else seemed to think so. They did not understand. They did not want to understand. Her work scared them. It was untraditional, unharmonious, unsimplistic, and had color. The closest that a work of art came to hers was one that used orange. It was accepted at the time, but was just a fad. The artist was later labeled a heretic. Andrea wondered if there was something wrong with herself.

"Maybe I'm wrong," she thought. "If I'm the only one who likes it, who's to say I'm right. I won't change though. This is what I am and no one will ever change that. I don't know. I'll think about it tomorrow."

The people slowly left in groups. With them, all of the groups of higher thought. No more discussions; no more evaluation. As the last group left, the art works stood on their own. Everything was still; everything was silent. The white spheres twinkled in the darkness. They were a brilliant and majestic sight. Off to the side, next to a brilliant painting, Andrea's newest painting hung. It was filled with blue and green and had white scattered about it. The colors gave it life. On closer examination, one could see that the blue formed oceans of water. The green rose out of the blue as land. The white gave it atmosphere.

Andrea and the others would not return until after much change had taken place. Then they would see, upon returning the next day, that Andrea's painting is life itself. They would be surprised to find that some of the life would reach out to the other works as well.