The Moment of Letting Go - J. A. Redmerski Page 0,51
the details of so many talented pieces of art, I slide the zipper open on my purse and pull out my camera.
“That has to be heavy carrying around on your shoulder,” Luke says, glancing down at it.
I shrug. “A little,” I say as I adjust a few settings. “But I don’t carry much else.”
“So no makeup drawer in there?”
“Nope.” I chuckle, then snap a shot of him.
We make our way down several rows of art and I begin to notice that the farther we go, the larger the paintings become. There’s a canvas painting of Kilauea that is almost as tall as me, but small in width. A stunning landscape so wide I could stretch my arms out to my sides and still not touch the edges. Easels have long since disappeared, replaced by the actual walls of the building because the paintings here are too large for easels. But there is still a lot of empty space, where I’m sure more art will be added over the next couple months. And as beautiful as all of the paintings and photographs that are here are, I can’t help but notice how there’s no real method to how things are being laid out—being in the business that I’m in, these kinds of things are hard for me to ignore. But eventually I pass it off as it just being too early, and that it will all come together in due time.
Finally, when we get to the last row, there is one giant wall with the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen, tall in height and enormous in scope; some of them could take up half a wall in my apartment back in San Diego.
“Wow,” I say, craning my neck as I look up. “This is gorgeous. Just gorgeous.” But so is the one next to it, and the one after that, and after that. I begin to see a pattern in the styles, like all artists have, and realize that a few of these were painted by the same person.
“Well, are you ready to go?” Luke says from behind. “There’s so many places I’d like to take you.”
My head snaps around, and I’m confused by his sudden disinterest in the paintings. But now that I think about it, he started to seem disinterested a few rows down. I didn’t think anything of it before, but now with his sudden suggestion that we leave just when some of the larger paintings are actually taking my breath away—Oh … wait a minute … no way.
I search his eyes and his face for the answer. He appears uncomfortable, though trying hard to suppress it.
Just the thought of it being true takes my breath away a little. My eyes move from Luke and the painting next to me, and back at Luke and then the painting again. Finally I decide only to look at the painting, the rich, dark sky with rolling gray and purple and red clouds. The vast, endless field of high dry grasses, stroked with yellows and browns, their tops leaning in the same direction as if a strong wind is forcing them over. A woman stands tall amid the grass, her long, blond hair blowing in the breeze, her black dress clinging to her form and blowing briskly behind her in a graceful tail of silken fabric. It looks so real I feel like I can walk right into it and join her.
The painting beside it is just as stunning and lifelike, even frightening. A great wall of rock climbs a thousand feet into the sky, blanketed by lush greenery that crawls the stone like millions of fingers, gripping and tearing their way to the top. Down below, at the base of the mountain, a tiny valley of rolling green hills covers the surface, and a pencil-thin pathway made by man snakes along in one direction as it spreads out into the center of what looks like the bottom of the world. At the top of the ancient stone wall, I spot four tiny figures sitting on rocks perched over the edge, and other tiny human figures standing at the bottom looking up through beams of sunlight and large swaths of shadow cast by the scaling rock above.
I look again at Luke, but he’s no longer looking back at me; he seems lost in the painting, but also just … lost. His smile is gone. That bright, playful personality I’ve grown so easily captivated by, seems shadowed by some kind of