Nice Lines, Lady

“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez faire aujourd’hui?” asked the Artist. What do you want to do?

The two dignified women beside me knew exactly what they wanted to “faire.” Silhouettes. Watercolours. Realistic paintings of realistic people. Crap like that.

“Et vous?” she asked again.

Gulp.

“I’m not a trained artist,” I stammered, “mais j’aime jouer avec les coleurs.”

The three real artists in the room smiled condescendingly, and a little amusedly. Jouer? Play? What nonsense was this?

The Artist led me to a shelf full of binders. “Choisir un sujet,” she commanded. Okay.

I thumbed through endless magazine cut-outs of tropical islands. Not really what I had in mind, but whatever. Apparently I must have a subject.

“Non, non, non,” tisked the Artist when I showed her a photo of a frothy, foamy, ocean wave, curling turquoise and white all over the page. “Non. C’est très difficile!” Tsk, tsk. Shame on me for aspiring to such unattainable heights.

This woman has no idea that I have no intention of actually painting that particular wave. “Not realism,” I sputtered. But she didn’t get it.

I motioned towards a photo of some pretty clouds. “Oh, non! C’est trop difficile!” Madame Artiste, clearly you are better at painting than at gently drawing forth the innate, yet unrealized expressive potential of your students.

I could see that I would need to help her help me find my inner artist, so I whipped out my phone and showed her a bunch of photos that I took at the Marc Chagall museum this morning. “J’aime ça, et ça, et ça,” I offered, pointing to various vibrant explosions of colour.

“Ah! Chagall! Bon!” The Artist nodded approvingly, and returned to her shelf full of binders. She looked through every single one, pulling out various Chagall prints that were in a completely different style than the ones on my phone. You know, the ones I didn’t bother photographing at the museum, because I thought they were weird and dull. Circuses and such. What have I to do with circuses?

I gestured back to the “trop difficile” wave photo. “C’est les coleurs que j’aime,” I said desperately. I showed her the blues in my Chagall photos. “Les coleurs. You see?”

“Ah!” she nodded. “Blue I understand. I understand blue. Viens.”

She led me to her stash of paint tubes and took out all the blues. Aquamarine. Cobalt. Turquoise. How do you say turquoise in English, she wondered. “Turquoise,” I responded. “Ah!” Turquoise. Today’s new word.

Now, choose some other warm and cool colours. Bon. On commence.

She showed me how to use acrylic paints over top of oil pastels, and then scrape away the paint to reveal the colours underneath. “C’est très amusant,” she cooed. Okay. I’ll try.

Well, I oiled and acrylicked and acrylicked some more, and every now and then l’Artiste glanced my way and sniffed a little. She tried, I think, to come up with something positive to say. “Les coleurs sont très joli,” said Dignified Art Student #1. The others agreed. Pretty colours. I have found some pretty colours.

The Artist made various suggestions, both helpful and not-so-helpful, and took the liberty of “improving” my artwork with some brushstrokes of her own.

“Il y a une problème avec votre lignes,” she declared.

What’s wrong with my lines, lady? I worked hard on those lines. Don’t tell me there’s a problem with my lines.

“C’est plus facile de faire ces lignes comme ça,” she smiled, and faire-d a deft demonstration. “Avec énergie! Une motion! Voila!” D’accord.

I made some energetic lines. Every line I made contributed to the degeneration of my already degenerate art. I should not have attempted lines. I should have stuck with colours. Bah.

She frowned and turned to her binder-shelf in search of a more appropriate subject for my next painting. Something without lines, perhaps. Maybe something with nothing at all. And while she tsk-tsked her way around the studio, I snatched a piece of coloured paper and went at it savagely with the beckoning blobs of paint still on my plastic plate palette. You want lines? I’ll give you lines! This line! And this one! Take that! And that! Hah!

I painted my first vigorously-lined masterpiece in about thirty seconds flat, tossed it aside, and began another. This line this way. That line that way. Screw you and your binders full of subjects. I can make lines. I’ll show you.

“Oh!” the three matronly dames crooned. “Fireworks! Palm trees! C’est Nice!” Yes, of course. It’s Nice. I’m in Nice, painting a picture of Nice. How good of you to find a municipality in my lines.

Rebel painting number two: curves. Warm colours. Red, pink, orange, white. Lilies, I thought. But I didn’t know it until they were done.

Rebel painting number three: lets try some shapes. What are they? Yellow poppies? Why not? I like them, whatever they are. And so do les Artistes.

My watch told me sadly that it was time to go; but I was just getting started. “You must keep working,” said the Artist, thrusting an artist-worthy canvasy-thing in front of me.

At this point I was mostly into not wasting paint. I had all these beautiful blobs of pigment before me, and I was paying 10 Euros just for “supplies,” so doggone it, I’d better use them. Every last one.

Rebel painting number four: this colour here, that colour there, let’s do something that isn’t lines, but isn’t really anything else either. You know, like feelings or something. Smells. Sounds.

“Ah!” nodded l’Artiste. “C’est le jungle!”

Yes, of course it is. It’s the jungle. Bien sûr.

The Artist turned aside to greet a couple that had wandered in to inquire about art lessons for their child. “Je suis comme un enfant,” I said later, and the Three Dames nodded in hearty agreement. “C’est bon! Picasso a dit…” something about artists being like children, no doubt.

So there it was. I spent an hour and a half painting a creepy spider-web-stained-glass-window-monstrosity that I never want to see again, and half an hour painting whatever the heck I wanted – utterly, blissfully, subjectless.

Les Trois Dames were smiling fondly now as they picked away at their picture-perfect watercolours. I was their new pet. I could even do tricks. With lines. Comme ça.

Someday maybe I will have the patience to learn a technique or two, and actually develop some legit skill in depicting things that intentionally look like other things. But at the moment it’s pretty freaking awesome to know nothing at all, and let the paints do what they will.

I am clearly not a Mona Lisa lady – the Louvre taught me that – but I’m delighted to be exactly what I am: a gurgling infant with a paintbrush, playing artist on a Monday afternoon in Nice.