Time To Paint

(Struggling Artist Is A Gay Trope)

It's 2 am on a Wednesday. Most of Seoul slumbered, getting the few hours of rest the busy city allowed before the crazy of the rush hour started and a new day of generating income began. A honk sounded here and there, of the leftover traffic from Tuesday night. Stray cats jumped from one roof to another, scavenging for food.

The moon shone and illuminated it all, washing the asleep and awake in light and chasing the darkness away.

The top window of a two-storey apartment that's tucked cozily between a dying comic book store and an unsanitary 24-hour doughnut shop, remained lit. It was in the sketchier parts of the city but it was the best three upcoming visual artists could afford.

They weren't that known in the scene yet, but they've found a nice little niche of patrons.

The top floor was supposed to be a bedroom but they converted it into an art studio. The building faced east and the wide windows allowed for so much natural light that it was perfect for painting.

If only Rosie, Seulgi and Chaeyoung actually rose up early to paint. Unfortunately, the three of them spent their late nights until the wee hours of the morning awake, preferring to work when the city slept, preferring to create when it was quieter.

Time didn't matter much to them, though, because they had all the time in their line of work to do whatever they wanted. Well, mostly. There were exhibits here and there but  gallery openings didn't usually start before 6pm.

Music played in the top floor of the apartment. The soulful sound of Jorja Smith's voice fills the air as the video of his tiny desk concert on Youtube plays in the background. Tubes of paint - new and old, opened and unopened, some even stepped on - scattered across the floor. Canvases - works that were abandoned, in progress, and completed, forgotten - lined the walls, some stacked neatly, some haphazardly and arbitrarily left lying around.

It was beautiful, contained chaos - the kind of environment borne out of the hunger and need to create, out of youth and creative frenzy.

Roseanne Chaeyoung Park hums along to the song, knowing the words, having listened to it on repeat for a day. It's her inspiration for her latest work. She dips a worn out paint brush in rich cobalt blue, watching the thick oil paint coat the bristles. She raises her hand and carefully touches the brush tip to the canvas before starting to paint in big, long strokes. Her movements are both carefree and controlled, her mind both lost in her work and living in it.

Rosie was in her own little world, untouched by the rest.

It's 2am on a Wednesday. Most of Seoul is asleep. Kang Seulgi stretches her arms over her head and yawns. It's been a long day. She looks at Rosie to her right who was busy going all out on her 45ft canvas, staining and smearing paint on it like a madwoman. She turns to Son Chaeyoung to her left who was the complete opposite, eyes unfocused and staring at her palette, mixing cherry red and white to create a pink with lazy circles of her brush, looking even more tired than she felt.

Seulgi laughs.

“Chaeng, you look dead on your feet.”

Chaeyoung snorts.

“That curator is such a bitch. Who the hell gives a two week deadline for such a big show?”

Seulgi shrugs.

“It’s not like this is the first time Fabrianne did us dirty, Chaeng.” Seulgi rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck. “At least she’s really good at selling our art to the young bourgeoisie.”

Their clientele and patrons were mostly kids who came from new money -  sons and daughters of tech moguls or CEOs of startups. The old rich had sticks too far up their asses to appreciate their art styles - those people whose appreciation of art stopped at 200 year old paintings and the benefits of buying and selling them tax-free.