Dealer's Choice

I approached the decor of my house with system, foresight, and unchangeable opinions.  I knew exactly what I wanted, what size, shape, and color it should be.  And until I acquired my two paintings, I wasn't the least confused.  But I am now‑-and was meant to be, I think.

It started when I decided on a seascape for the bedroom.  I know the sea well, and while I agree she has many moods, her typical one, to me, is lightheartedness.  Therefore I wanted a painting that showed her at play. 

I searched the art stores for weeks.  Dealer after dealer showed me angry seas or serene ones, and these simply wouldn't do.  I too have my angry moments, but I wouldn't like to be captured in oils during one of them.  Why then should the sea want to be seen in an off moment?  And as for her quietude, here again she was no different from me.  Our surface may seem still, as when I'm daydreaming, but our depths brim with life and actions.  A calm sea is just not representative of the truth, and I'd never purchase such a painting.

What disturbed me most, however, was that I had a photograph of the sea which showed the surf in exactly the mood I wanted.  I knew I couldn't be the only one who'd seen her lively and gay.  My photo itself was proof her playfulness could be witnessed by all.  Why had no artist portrayed it?

As I reflected on this, it occurred to me someone skilled with oils might be able to turn my snapshot into a painting.  A series of phone calls brought me in touch with Joe, a mechanic for whom art was a hobby.  He agreed to paint my seascape providing he didn't have to show me as I appeared in the photo.  My dress, he explained, would date the painting, and since I didn't have to pose, I gave him his way.  He had the choice of putting me in a white robe, the nude, or out of the picture entirely.  Contented with this, he promised to bring the finished work in a month.

It was breathtaking when I saw it.  He'd painted me nude, but not immodestly, and more important still, he'd gone beyond what the photo showed.  Somehow his lighting, his colors, all created the effect of dawn, not merely the dawn of day, but the dawn of time.  The sense of refreshment and renewal I get from the sea was in every brushstroke he'd used.

As a result, the scape seemed not quite real.  It had an other-world air to it, and thus paid homage to the imagination the sea stirs.  I was captivated by his work and thought the price he charged too small a reward.  Any price would have been.

I wasn't disturbed by the painting's suggestion of the mythical.  I'd long been accustomed to the strange interaction of reality and imagination, and I saw no reason why an inherently real scene could not, through art, be made to look unreal.  It seemed, for that matter, an eminently logical result, and I didn't dispute it.

Then, when Bill and I married, a larger house was needed for our combined families.  Once again I had to search for a painting.  This one was to be used in the dining room, and I'd decided a woodland in green and blue was called for, a scene wider than high. 

At first Bill and I thought buying this would be easy.  Such landscapes are common in the art dealers' wares, and the colors I'd chosen shouldn't be hard to find.  Yet somehow nothing we saw seemed to satisfy me.  At last we realized why.

The scene I wanted existed only in my mind.  I wanted a picture of my imaginary woodland, and in particular of the place where the stream, which partly surrounds then partly enters the woods, begins to disappear.  Moreover, since the stream surfaces again as a woodland pool, I wanted the painting to suggest something in the distance but not really indicate what it was.

"But you'll never find a picture that shows exactly what you've imagined," Bill argued.  "You'll have to have it painted to order.  Why don't you call Joe again?"

Yet I couldn't.  I knew that no matter how skillfully Joe worked, he'd still show his own imagination: his woodland, not mine.  This I couldn't settle for.  Despairing of ever having what I wanted, I put off the search for the painting and steeled myself to accept second best.

Yet we did find my landscape.  It was hanging over the bed in a model house we were exploring, and Bill showed it to me with triumph.  Familiar with my mind, he'd known the moment he saw the painting that it showed exactly what I wanted.  The colors, the size, the shape were all correct.  And the work even created a sense of the imagined‑-one saw immediately the scene wasn't real.

The art piece in that house was not for sale, but with painstaking research we tracked the picture down.  It was an odd reproduction, for it was based on an original that had been a different shape.  By widening what the artist had painted, the reprinters had created a slight distortion, and this lent the scene its sense of mystery.  Unfortunately, no more of the reproductions were available.  But, as Bill pointed out, Joe could easily copy the print in the model house, and thus I could have my woodland scene after all.

And yet, I didn't get it.  Joe's work, when I saw it, was lovely, an excellent picture.  "It looks so real," I told him.  He beamed at this, and only Bill understood my disappointment.

"We'll take it," he assured Joe.  "It's just right for the dining room."  And to me, later, "Joe's never been in your imaginary woodland.  He's created a scene that looks real, sure, but that doesn't mean there's no imagination in it.  Can't you accept that?"

"Oh, I'll hang the painting," I promised.  "I know it's good‑-it's just that it lacks mystery.  I get the feeling it was painted from an actual scene, and somehow this dismays me."

"Nonsense," Bill reproved me.  "You know perfectly well how Joe created it.  That landscape exists in the imagination, no matter how real you think it looks."

Not so.  We found the scene less than a year later.  It lay to our right as we drove a New England highway, and excitedly we took a colored photo of the view.  When developed it matched the painting line for line, color for color.  An unknowing observer would have sworn Joe's work had been based on it.

And thus, finally, the landscape did yield a mystery.  Now when we have guests I show them both the paintings and the photos.  And then I ask the questions that have haunted me for years.  Which of these two art works is more rooted in reality?  And what, when you get down to it, is reality at all?