Belinda by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page A

is usually more than enough oil in them already. I use a little turpentine to dilute, when I need it, but not very much. I like the stuff thick. I like the whole work to be dense and wet, yet moving only when I move it.
    As for the canvases, I work almost exclusively in large size with only a few small ones for taking to the park or the yard. And I have them stretched and primed for me. There is always a good supply on hand because I often work on more than one project.
    So setting to work on a full-scale painting meant squeezing out a full palette of earth colors-yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw umber, Indian and Venetian red-and reaching for any one of a hundred prepared brushes. I might sketch a little first, but probably not. I'd go in alla prima, painting everything all at once, creating within hours a fully covered surface.
    Representing something exactly as it looks-that is automatic with me. Perspective, balance, the illusion of three-dimensional space, all that I learned before I knew what to do with it. I was able to draw what I saw when I was eight years old. By sixteen I could do a good oil portrait of a friend in an afternoon, or in one night cover a big four-by-six foot canvas with realistically rendered horses, cowboys, farm land.
    And speed has always been crucial. I mean, I work best when I work fast, on every conceivable level. If I stop to think about how I am rendering a trolley car crowded with people as it rattles downhill under windblown trees, I might get blocked, lose my nerve so to speak. So I plunge. I execute. In an hour and a half, voila, the trolley car.
    And then if I don't like it, I throw it out. But time equals output with me. And one of the surest signs that I am doing something bad, that I am on the wrong track creatively, is that something takes too long to finish.
    An art teacher I once had-a failed painter himself who worshiped the severe abstract canvases of Mondrian and Hans Hofmann-told me I ought to break my right hand. Or start painting with my left exclusively.
    I didn't listen to him. As far as I'm concerned, that was like telling a young singer who has perfect pitch that he has to learn to sing off key to get some soul into his voice. He doesn't.
    Like any representational artist, I believe in the eloquence of the accurately rendered image. I believe in that fundamental competence. The wisdom and magic of a work come through a thousand unarticulated choices regarding composition, lighting, color. Accuracy won't keep life out. To think so is stupid. And in my case weirdness is inevitable.
    Despite my craft, no one has ever called me dull or static. On the contrary, I've been labeled grotesque, baroque, romantic, surreal, excessive, inflated, overblown, insane, and, of course, though I didn't want to admit it to Belinda, many people have called me sinister and erotic. But never static. Never overskilled.
    All right. I took the plunge. I went at her full sweep with her dense golden hair and her white nightgown and her gorgeous little feet beneath the hem of the gown and the great layers of umber gloom closing in around her, and it was really working and the horse was splendid as always, and her little hand ...
    Something completely unexpected happened.
    I wanted to paint her naked.
    I thought about it for a little while. I mean, what was this with her sitting there on this glorified toy in this white flannel nightgown? What the hell was she doing there? She's not Charlotte. It was an OK painting so far. In fact, it was better than OK, but it was also all wrong. A detour.
    I took it off the easel. No. Not her.
    And then, without thinking much about it, I turned to the wall the canvases of Angelica for the new book. I laughed when I caught myself doing it. "Don't look, Angelica," I said. "In fact, why the hell don't you pack up and get out, dear? Go to Rainbow Productions in Hollywood."
    I looked around.
    No need to turn around the other canvases. These were the grotesque ones, the ones