STILL LIFE.

Vincent puts down his brush. His eyes stare at the canvas. Standing back, he feels the cold wall behind him. The painting seems to move, to have a life of its own. His hands shake; his head aches. He closes his eyes and senses the hard wall against his back. He wants to paint and paint until he can no longer paint or his hands fail or his eyes fail him. He remembers the woman he painted in the Café du Tambourin three years before and his portrait of Armand Roulin a year or two ago, they pleased him, but this painting stares back at him. Even though his eyes are closed, he can feel the eyes of the portrait staring at him. The eyes are stern, unforgiving. Painting in the open air is different; there is a light there, an openness, the soul can breathe. Vincent opens his eyes and moves away from the wall. He wants to take up the brush and slash and slash at the face portrayed on the canvas. But he doesn’t take up the brush. He stands and stares back at the face before him. Did the lips move just then? Did that eye move? The face is familiar because it's his. Yet it is not him, but an image.

“Look away!” Vincent bellows at the canvas. “Don’t look at me so coldly!” He moves closer and stares hard at the patterns the oils have made. The smell. The colour. “All this moves and lives!” he shouts moving backwards. He looks away from the canvas and stares at the room about him. Theo should be here, Vincent mutters to himself. He knows the face on the canvas still looks at him, even though he himself is looking elsewhere. He turns suddenly and the eyes on the canvas stare directly at him. “You judge too harshly!” he bellows again, moving closer to the canvas. He takes up the brush and waves it in front of the canvas threateningly. “What would you know about it all?” he states angrily, a touch of spittle on his lower lip. Vincent wipes his mouth with his free hand. He moves closer to the canvas until the oils seem like mounds of hills and deep valleys.” I paint what I paint!” he yells. His fist tightens around the brush until his knuckles whiten. “I would paint God Himself if he was visible to my eyes…And yet…He is visible in a way in all I paint. He is there…In the colour…In the motion.” Vincent pauses. He breathes deeply. He throws down the brush and it hits the stone floor, scattering touches of oil about it. “Is that art?” he mumbles. He moves away from the canvas, sits on a chair, and closes his eyes once again.

In the blackness behind his eyes, he feels he is painting a huge canvas of blues and yellows with hints of reds, and black menacing lines here and there. He holds a brush in his hand and the oil moves across the huge canvas as if in a dance. It all seems to be swaying back and forth as if so alive he could actually walk across it and feel the texture of all that was about him.

“The sky is menacingly dark and the black crows scream at me!” he suddenly shouts, but without opening his eyes. “The corn is ablaze with yellow flames and the paths run with red sickening blood.” Vincent stops and squeezes his eyes shut tight. His features become distorted. His mouth dribbles spittle.” Theo,” he whispers softly in the darkness. “Theo, Theo, Theo…”He opens his eyes. All is still. Still, unmoving life. As if dead.