Artist's Brushes

[Howard Sokol's brushes Art Tree]

Field had decided that he could not paint, once his fixed thinking had made up his mind for him, he also determined that he would never be able to draw. He probably could have been a passable artist, or at the very least enjoyed the activity and felt rewarded as many of us are, but somehow on the creative journey he had discovered an obsession that became for him the spiral out of despair.

Intricate lemon laburnum,

Star anise, polished gold wings.

Like a luna moth, he was always searching for the key light, that fired up the twilight. This was an excruciating passion for discreetly collecting the brushes of the artists that surrounded him, when he modelled for them. He wasn’t particularly attractive anymore but his craggy features and generally well-structured limbs, from years of labouring outdoors digging fields, thus his nickname ‘Fields’, made him an easy subject to draw. In his youth, he must have been a handsome man, full of vigour and urgency, a little of this had left its mark for he was a muscular tall man.

He somehow surreptitiously, slipped an artists short flat brush, or filbert brush into his belongings whether it was slipped into the folds of his shirt or trousers as he dressed discreetly behind an easel or whether it was dropped into his rucksack, which earlier had been inconspicuously laid beside one of the artists at work, but one of them would be a brush less at the end of each session.

Acoustic ceremony of fire embers.

Elaborately textured brocade.

No one would have understood why he took the small trophy, but to him it was a significant gesture. Regardless of how much he was paid, this one small artefact was itself payment enough, even if he were starving and being a life study was his only means of income, when it came to his earnings this was the one thing that he wanted more than anything else.

Once he had his treasure, he would guard it until he was in a safe place to unravel it from its secure place. Then he would tenderly wipe the excess paint that clung to it, and not worry that this same colour; oil, or acrylic or water colour might have permanently stained his jeans, or the inside of his rucksack which was already a multitude of rainbow colours and spilt inks. When he had the brush at home, he lifted it to the light and then stared in awe at the finger marks, for each were unique prints that had embedded themselves into the ‘French ultramarine’ paint that had run down its handle.

Like a detective examining it for some specific factual reality, he superimposed his imagination to exact a memory from this specific brush. He was excited when he saw the way the last remaining colour had clung to it as he clung to it now… and that he knew this was a colour that represented a moment he had lived that was captured somewhere on a painted sheet, a representation of himself that he would never be able to afford to buy and perhaps in a lifetime would not see again.

Raised peonies and trailing vines.

Only a child saw the mask slip.

He would allow the colour to rub over his fingers as he flicked the brush end, and remember these colours; cadmium yellow, splodges of cadmium red, with smears of diluted Rose Malmaison, and Winsor green… The same shades that had surrounded him when he had stood painfully still in the cold studio, where his limbs sometimes felt frozen, and the small paraffin heater that had been used for years hardly warmed, until the studio was upgraded to have central heating, and then it was less painful, less cold and more stifling being in the airless room. Long after arthritic aches and pains made him tremble and we positioned him in seated situations, profiling a more sedate study.

The poppy seed oil, or walnut, or flax seed oil, that was being used, to seal the paint, as it was smeared around canvasses, and covered brushes retained its own oily smells, and at times the rancid scents made the small working area feel suffocating.

He never seemed to have made any friends from the studios, They drew his outline, insect leg-strokes, then filled it in and used their tissues to smudge their charcoal, or perhaps with their fingers, or their knives, or perhaps their long, their flat, their round brushes to fill him in and then maybe glaze or leave him opaque… Then he was ignored beyond the reserved smile, or glance perhaps because seeing him in the flesh had now succeeded in alienating him. He wondered if they would be friendlier towards him were he himself more approachable, but he could not change his overall self-expression, which was one of sombre detachment.

I was perhaps the only person that ever spoke to him, with any real interest, or perhaps it was mild curiousity since I was always gratified by connections with those I considered a fascinating mental study. Of course my brushes had gone missing once or twice, but I had noticed immediately as I replaced them back into a makeup brush roll sleeve where each had it’s place and I would have realised easily when one was gone, for me, these were precious for a different reason. I had painstakingly scratched my initials into the handles, with a sharp blade and had lovingly taken care of them since my mother with her hard work and during turbulent times had bought these for me. Therefore my set meant more perhaps to me, then to the student of affluence, carelessly handling theirs less appreciated, since there may have been less attachment emotionally. Hence, when I saw my filbert brush slip inside his pocket, I had cornered and glared at him, then felt surprised at his fear of discovery and why it meant so much to him, for each brush theft was treated as the first time.

Broken bridge between cliffs.

A torn bridal Broderie Anglaise veil.

Eventually, I studied him beyond the moment of drawing or painting him, and one day I asked him if he wanted a lift home, or needed to borrow my umbrella, it was a cold September night, I genuinely felt sorry for his loneliness as I perceived it. He appeared so shy and frigid, I thought of a Luna Moth, it's fragility and short-lived passionate life. His dark blonde eyelashes seemed frozen, his sensory hairs bristling all over his body, sharply frozen, as did his features that day. Now, he looked curiously relaxed and then he smiled, or perhaps it was a shy inwardness that made it appear as if he grinned... Then his eyes squinted as if there was a light around me that was too bright for his eyes. He nodded, and showed how unusual his teeth were, each with a clear gap between them, like old stepping stones across his dark gums.

That particular afternoon he had shared his flask of cocoa with me, and we had sat close together, on deck chairs, his naked shoulders covered with a small blanket, and his 'swimming' shorts a striped pair slightly showing his muscular thighs which we artists had often sketched with vigour. The scene had been one of a beach shot, with minimum props. Whilst the striped deckchairs were being put away one of the artists was brushing up the sand that had layered the floor. As Field wiped his bare feet, and rolled up a small towel that was lent to him he said softly, that he would not be modelling anymore. A slight tremor in his gait, indicated that he was finding it hard to stay so still, and his shoulders appeared more bowed than I had ever noticed before, the liver spots and freckles that spattered his back making him seem more interesting than usual, in terms of texture and depth of colour. He looked small, and discreetly venomous like a monarch caterpillar: striped creamy white, fiery yellow and black dressing gown.

I laughed inwardly at the preposterous idea, and realised how easy it was to misjudge on looks alone. As if he saw my private allusion, he seemed to quell doubts, when he moved his toe, a fraction to allow a scurrying winter awake beetle scurry across the dust and sand, invoking the 'Sheikh', with Field, in a kind of lonely pathos, as he appealed to my memory of such black and white cinematic imagery, a vivid and unkindly cut.

Trapped Luna Moth.

Yet this, the man who died thrice.

He agreed to the lift, and dressed quickly, I could hear his creaking bones, and brittle joints click, and his fingers appearing brittle and bare. As we walked slowly through the fog, he seemed the essence of some quixotic 'Dickensian' character, that made Eton High Street seem foreboding. I felt I was out of place, and an elegant Edwardian, to his darker, cherished Gothic persona. We arrived at my small car; a beautiful polished black mini, automatic, and bought by my brother (the second he had generously gifted me with). I lifted the boot and gently placed my bag of tools, the precious worn, brush roll, paper. Then the larger two damp, 'Gesso-primed', mounted canvasses that I had sprayed across the backs, so that they would be ready the next day, were laid across the parcel shelf, and back seat respectfully handled. Finally, and the large new case I had recently purchased to carry all my past completed work.

When I asked if Field wanted me to put his bag in the boot, he clutched it closely to his chest and shook his head, and I realised he must have acquired a new addition, and winked at him, though I also felt sorry for whoever was short of their brush. He climbed in, and I had a moment to view him entirely differently to the man that stood there like a stone statue for so many seasons, with almost complacency. We all knew every inch of him, yet he was entirely an obscure blank canvass to each of us. As I turned the radio on, the haunting baroque created an underrated atmosphere between us, and the misty waves of the fog that had begun to settle like dark white shadows around us. A reserved man, his single word answers were like mnemonic word devices for something more detailed, perhaps the delicate drifting, emotion that he withheld. He never initiated any small-talk nor did he comment on any of my statements about the heavy eery weather, the coldness of the season, or even the subject choice during our class which was so misplaced, for after all, who painted a beach, spring-warm scene in the middle of Winter?

.... Didn't dare to care, for the first.

'broken-change' vows.

When we arrived at his home, a small cosy terrace, which had a basement to his kitchen; he put his old whistling kettle on and then from within the folds of his old Fisherman's navy coat, he drew out a paintbrush. He laid the brush out on a small table upon which lay a square of brown paper... He carefully checked to see if there were any particular distinguishing marks that isolated it, like those that he felt he had, which isolated him, those distinguishing marks that were invisible to all but him, those marks that distinguished him from others, the fact that he had rather disproportionately average limbs and that he wasn’t particularly well endowed to make the men or women for that matter particularly interested or the scar that ran across his belly where he had been torn open when he had fallen, as a child of eight, from a tree the colour of ‘Paynes grey, raw umber and yellow ochre’ as the sunshine brightened the winter branches…

This left what was deemed an interesting mark that helped the artist who was painting him to recognise imperfections… although sometimes old swirls of cotton or heavy damask fabric would be draped over it to conceal it as if it were too much a distraction.

The life well lived,

Reflected on too late.

He would remember how the fan brush dipped in cobalt blue one side and sap green underside, to create a two tone effect had been held for several minutes in the air, before it touched the stretched canvass. Throughout his class he would have his eye on it, seeing the paint being reapplied, sometimes mixed on the palette other times on the canvass itself, and would try to stay focussed on the nothingness that he had become so familiar with.

[Sketch of a Nude Man (W. 4 recto) Artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti]

As he was painted from all angles, and with colours that appeared to redden his skin on paper, such as ‘brown madder alizarin’, or make him appear almost jaundiced when he was tinted with ‘Naples yellow light’…. and peered at by eyes that acted like telescopes focussing in and out over his angles, his burnt sienna shades and the shadow that may have dripped part of him into a darkness where he melted it appeared to those who had the vision to see his vanishing form into the melting light.

Left a lazy impression

evaporated perfume head-notes

He took the brush and for a moment he held it as he had seen it being held, then he imitated the very way he had seen it move through the air. Just in the way that artist may have held it like chopsticks or perhaps it was a young woman who he had loved so many years ago. She stuck it through her hair bun and sometimes twisted it through the hair at the back of her head as she pondered over which round brush to take up next, and he watched the globule of crimson alizarin drip down the back of her shirt.

He held the white hog brush, stiff: perfect for thick daubs of paint and then brushed his fingers through it, and even though the paint was like dry dust and covered his fingers in a powdery talc like pungent spices needed for an exotic curry. He would for a moment imagine his long gone first love, Her fingers around his fingers as his hand was the brush itself and they were holding hands… Or maybe he would imagine his friend the young male artist with the beautiful black skin, who they called Garlic, because he ate it all the time sometimes raw. Who when he was sitting beside him would be stroking his forehead, where the afro hair was tinged with purple and cream flicks of paint from his brush.

In the middle of a season,

His feelings compounded.

Field would recall the way that Garlic stroked the end of his durable synthetic brushes before he dipped them into liquid white and prepared his board. Garlic always used a thumbhole palette, one which felt comfortable for his stubby thumb, the only disfigured part of his hand, for he had caught it in a car door as a child and it had restrained itself from growing as long or as flexible as his other thumb.

Field would rub the burnt umber crumbling coloured dust, or the chalky white that had been used for highlighting trees and the lake light slices that showed him dipping his form into a stream which he had not even imagined until he saw that the artist named Santini had painted around him with textures that made him feel dizzy as he tried to make sense of what he saw had been done to his form which now had gossamer wings like a dragon flies’ attached to his shoulders and with him half hovering and half submerged into the water that She had imagined him to be surrounded by.

As early lust dissipated.

Like an exquisite luna moth.

That picture had begun his daydreams for he now had absorbed the same vision into his memory and believed at some subconscious level that he had actually experienced this. Those that were less enjoyable, such as when he also absorbed the darker images that he had seen himself drawn into, easily distracted happy thoughts.
From a small box on a sideboard he took a label which he tied around the stolen brush and he named the artist, and the date in small neat writing, where neither the curls or swirls indicated anything more than restraint.

He talked of this and so much more as he made me tea, in old fashioned deep winter cups (to retain the heat) of the tea. Then his veined trembling hands carried a tray, with teacups and saucers and sugar bowls, and cream jugs, and a small teapot warmed and wearing its own tea cosy. For he was now in his elder years and at least sixty or perhaps even more. His skin the colour of stones painted with yellow ochre and raw umber and his whole form appeared to have a translucent glaze that surrounded him, in his small home, a place of simple adornment and comfortable neatness. Being covered with a small handkerchief clean and pressed preciously guarded whatever he read, such an old weathered novel, lay on his side table next to one of his two armchairs.

As he followed my preferences: strong tea, yes some sugar, dark molasses - the only type he served, at odds with the usual image of white sugar cubes. I waited for his usual (almost clicked heels) sombre, military nod that always followed his offerings. He reminded me of the grave reverence a Samurai may have shown a visitor. The mood of subterranean emotions that were deep inside him barely colouring the surface of his skin. Although it seemed as if his skin had been afflicted by a sensitivity; touched by an unseen breeze of overlapping feelings, repressed and now releasing like a mist.

Such short-lived tawny moments

The heart notes scented his way.

There was no sofa as if he never expected more than one more person as company. As he offered me a biscuit the colour of Bistre (darkish brown) and gold ochre, where the cream between the biscuit was a buttery colour, I began thinking of each shade in my moment much as an artist would, how my sable brushes would capture the paint before releasing it across the glossy sheet.

I felt guilty as crumbs fell to the floor, and retrieved them trying not to put them in my mouth as I had seen a small child (who came with his mother to the studio that day) do that very day, a child that may once have been this man, for that child appeared to enjoy its small crayons, which were used to scribble with pride, the child’s name, and a pet cat who was adoringly called ‘Poppet’, tabby with white paws, like Field’s cat, which he named quixotically ‘Winsor’, after his favourite colours Winsor blue and green.


[W. Culmer & Sons, (Established 1809) Painting-Brush Manufacturers, Hornsey Roas, London, N.]

He would for a moment close his eyes as he recalled the painting that belonged to the brush he held in his hands so softly it could have been a freshly picked flower. Green eyed, Winsor sitting looking as remote as Field, on his knee, wrapped around his arm in such a way that his tail appeared to me rather like a brush itself, dipped as it appeared in a whitish grey.

Chillingly, she departed

The deeply rich, vibrant Saffron.

When he opened this eyes I noticed for the first time how much they reminded me of the tree colours that we enjoyed at the end of Autumn, as Winter first came and kissed the leaves to death. His eyes were silver grey with a bluish tint, and pale olive flecks sparkled through them, it was then that I realised how pretty his eyes were… eyes that almost always diverted away from being caught by anyone in any painting, so that each artist only appeared to capture his gaze away from the artist. I realised that he had never looked straight at my eyes, and that he always managed to turn away or look at something with an intense or vague look, sometimes indifferent, other times with a close scrutiny as if his life depended upon it.

Violet liqueurs velvet path,

amused his fingertips.

He would eventually show me how each brush would be wrapped in a brown paper wrapping and labelled with the day, and the name of the artist and slipped into a drawer with many, many others…brushes that were tainted by ‘Prussian blue’, or a pale orange the colour of kumquats, or a lemony star-fruit shade, such warm colours brightened the darkness of the drawers where these were kept.

I walked to my car, and the fog appeared to have settled into dark shadows of swirling clouds around the cars. I opened the boot and lifted out the easel that lay across my brush roll. I took out the very brush that he had ‘stolen’ so many months previously, and now I held it for a moment, as I shut the boot. I returned to him and knocked on the window of his basement cottage-style window, and watched him come to the window, framed by damp honeysuckle, peer out nervously. Then he opened the door meekly. For the first time I saw him smile, broad and open, the handsome face of youthful spring in a winter face of aged memories and recollections... I handed him my precious brush, as Winsor slipped past our legs, and padded softly away into the amorphous misty darkness, with a regal air that made me remember my own cats.

Much as a scarf that she left,

so quickly she had gone, Luna Moth.

Field, bent down and kissed my forehead just before, I turned on my heel and left… but not before I heard him say…. ‘Oh thank you, thank you….’

I never placed another filbert brush in that section of my brush roll; in fact I squeezed its replacement into another section for somehow I felt something was missing, even though he did not.


Narrative from a short story: 'Artist's Brushes', by xsapph: 5th September 1999.