The Dove Keeper (Frerard)

Two

Gerard's show was called The Flowers of Hell. Inspired by, of course, a work of Baudelaire, and the entire show seemed to anchor on a picture that Gerard had created fairly late on in his creative process which accentuated this theme. He called itVan Gogh's Sunflower, but instead of doing a reproduction of Van Gogh's work, Gerard's painting was a sunflower painted on a blue background with Van Gogh's head in the middle, acting as the flower's large centre. There were lots of variations on the abject floral theme: another one had a portrait of Van Gogh with a sunflower in place of his ear, another had Van Gogh and Gauguin (who had painted sunflowers to one another), locked in an embrace in a sunflower field. There were several more of Gauguin and Van Gogh, acting like a perfect couple, always locked in embraces with flowers all around them, or as parts of their weak and starved bodies. These paintings took up the side of the exhibit which displayed the title, and it was where most people congregated. I had seen a lot of these paintings, but now that I saw them in conjunction with the tall black letters that formed The Flowers of Hell in front of me, these pieces struck me in a different way.

"I didn't know Gauguin and Van Gogh were lovers," I remarked.

"They may not have been, but I think they were. Purely an artistic interpretation, mind you, but what isn't? Their letters to one another are as passionate as I've seen," Gerard explained. He was taking me around the room with him, his hand on the small of my back. There were a lot of people inside, but in spite of the crowd, we were left alone. Though everyone knew this was a show for Gerard Wyatt, no one had any idea who that was. Gerard had been instructed to produce mystery, and then, after some time of it, grew quite fond of keeping this mysterious nature. In the one corner of the art gallery there was the artist info and a picture, but it was a self-portrait that Gerard had produced. He painted himself as a dove jacket, and the dove jacket alone.

"I was trying to go for a Magritte painting, where the bodies of people in suits seemed to suspend themselves as if nothing and everything supported them. I don't know if it came off right," he confessed to me, noticing my eyes wandering over the painting and information about himself. The information was also fairly sparse.Gerard Wyatt, former Parisian artist, now lives in New Jersey. One single sentence, and it produced the half truth that others could fill in about history. The sentence biography was not what people came to see, though, and now what drew the exasperated sighs when seeking information. Most people seemed disappointed that there was no actual photo of the artist. It was that perverse instinct we all had, to know absolutely everything and to want to see.

"I should know," Gerard stated. "I have that same thing. In their position, I wouldn't only request a photo of the artist, I would want a nude, as if these paintings weren't enough of the vulnerable impulse satisfied."

As Gerard and I began to walk the perimeter and I was seeing all the paintings together at once, I began to understand his small self-portrait a little better. That wasa nude for him. This entire art show was a nude for him. Being naked required more than just taking off one's clothing; it involved baring everything that you had tried to keep secret. These paintings, though twisted and surreal a lot of the time, were full of the truth. They were Gerard's unconscious mind, his dreams, and what his eyes perceived to be his reality. The bright colours unified all of them with the intensity of emotions that they were reactions against. The overwhelming colours could sometimes be seen as a way to distract, a way to tidy up truth but not actually dwell in it, but it was the opposite here. Just because Goya used black to convey his deepest darkest emotions, didn't mean that Gerard could use neon colours and be made inauthentic. Colour was colour, so long as you used it to create your reality, then it was what you became.

There were a lot of self-portraits, although only myself or Vivian may have known them to be self-portraits. Several of them involved shadows and skylines that had clouds shaped like a man. It took me until I saw the one that contained a thick black outline of a man filled with every single colour, that I realized it was him. Then, shortly after, I realized how much he was showing here. This was all that was inside of him; if you were to cut him and break the fortress of his skin and clothing, all you would find underneath was colour upon colour upon colour. It was breath-taking and beautiful. I held his hand and squeezed it tight as we walked by those pieces. He was risking so much right then, and I didn't know how he could bear to sell any of it.