Call her ZADDY

Ch 13- Haters to lovers art night

Mick glanced around cautiously as he stepped through the sliding glass doors leading to Gabrielle's small beach front studio. Over his arm he was lugging two giant reusable grocery bags packed to the brim with art supplies and a bunch of other cool looking junk. From her seat at couch , Gabrielle could see a industrial sized ruler sticking out of one of the bags and several large brushes bulging from within the canvas' bloated seams.

"All right girl, I brought a few extra art supplies here if you needed anything."

Mick slipped off his flip flops and placed them at the door, before looking around the small studio and immediately appearing irritated.    

          "You know Gabrielle, I pictured your studio to be homier. Why is it so bare in here? I thought maybe you would have at least painted the handles on your kitchen cupboards different colors or something, or at least bothered to hang some of your art up on your walls."

    "Oh, I like my living environment to be like a blank canvas. It helps me think better."

Several of the lightbulbs in the kitchen were out, and with no t.v. , or decorations on the walls her studio basically looked like a small prison cell. Gabrielle winced, then turned away towards the refrigerator to pour a much needed drink.

          After taking a small sip of red wine, she turned to watch Mick for a moment from across the room where she couldn't help but smile at his total lack of awareness. While They'd only been friends a few weeks, regardless of how much he got on her nerves , his quirky mannerisms amused her. Something about his comical lips and sleepy, doe eyes , always made her want to laugh. Plus With that ridiculous bandana on his head and knapsack in tow , he looked just like A young Huck Fin.

     I haven't painted in years," she admitted looking down at the rim of her glass and circling it with her finger.

    "Well, get to it then girl," he shrugged. Anyway...", he said over his shoulder, "I thought you were supposed to be like this amazing artist."

    ——

    Glancing back at her own blank canvas, Gabrielle was instantly transported back to the painfully shy artist she was as a kid. At an early age Gabrielle had begun studying painting, where in grade school, she was considered sort of a local prodigy in her home town. She cringed thinking back on her parent's pride in her artistic talent. To this day they still loved to remind her of her god given brilliance.

Standing alone in her dumpy studio, the bleakness of her own life hit her then hard. She was all alone on an island thousands of miles away from home with no hope of establishing a real adult life like her parents generation had been afforded. Men have it so much easier, she thought.   

    Only then did Gabrielle look over at Mick, who was , case in point, clearly pleased with himself. At the moment he bore a solemn expression while balancing a pencil in his month. Next he began making all sorts of contrived gestures with his paint brush, while happily slopping paint strokes onto his page. It was like watching a performance of someone doing a performance of a young Bob Ross.

Ha!, what a hack, she thought to herself.

    Then she considered the idea for a second that Mick was simply having fun. "Hmm, Art for fun?," she pondered. At the moment the idea sounded revolutionary, almost rebellious. The truth was she had spent the last several years making tedious commissions out of beads to support herself as an artist and completely abandoned her real passion for painting. For her, art hadn't been fun in a very long time.

    Feeling shaken, she took a deep breath, picked up a paintbrush and sat down to paint.

————

     A haunted girl stared back at her from a large canvas an hour later. The painting was done in odd colors with big confident brush strokes. Hidden in the figure's eyes was a deep sadness, adding a disturbing psychological element to the work that made Gabrielle uncomfortable.

    Gabrielle leaned back to study the composition before realizing Mick was standing next to her staring.

"Gabrielle...why don't you just draw anime style like everyone else?," Mick blurted.

    At that Gabrielle slipped out a surprised little laugh despite herself. Truthfully, she was starting to enjoy how refreshing Mick's low brow comments could be. He was so joyously uniformed.  It was then that her mind drifted back to their first introduction at the gallery, where he had made such a fool of himself. God she hated him back then.

    But Now that she was getting to know him however, she almost felt bad for the poor guy. He was so fucking ignorant. Wasn't his favorite magazine was Juxtapose? Clearly he had no idea how masognystic that magazine was nor anime itself. Didn't he get that all the wide set eyed females looked like fetishized children? He's a peasant, she reminded herself.

    ————

    After they were done obligatorily viewing her "creepy" painting as Mick called it, Gabrielle coolly suggested they next check out his artwork, which was, conversely, the epitome of good vibes. Before them stood a dopey cartoon lion outlined in black, painted with bright Rasta colors and smiling a big stony smile.

"Ha, that's so you!" Gabrielle laughed.

Both paintings were self-portraits of course.

    

———

"How about you paint my portrait now", Gabrielle suggested as she jumped up on the couch. "And not in cartoon style. Paint me using realism!"

Gabrielle paused for a moment realizing her blunder. Johanna had been making her watch way too many romantic movies online lately. She seriously hoped he didn't catch the accidental Titanic slip up.

After daring to glance over at Mick's reaction , she found him none the wiser, sharpening pencils with an exhilarated look on his face. Phew!, Gabrielle thought, he was probably too consumed over the prospect of showing off to have caught her mistake.

"Here try it with a pencil, it will be easier", Gabrielle instructed.

The island wind rattled the blinds behind them and blew her  hair off her shoulder where she sat down on the couch, arranging her skirt and then settled into her pose.