The Wages, An Illustrated Story | 23. Songs and Parables | The Void Artist
What I thought I had seen was correct. In the middle of all of the other art, with animals, and landscapes, and children playing hockey, there was this one woman, with tousled auburn hair and very unique glasses, seated in a little stall, showing paintings that were each an empty square of a single colour, all about a yard across on each side, with no frames. Just blank pearly squares, each a pastel, earth tone, or metallic colour.
“Are you the artist of these?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
I looked into the empty spaces of her paintings. I was a little baffled, maybe even scared by her artwork, but I liked the feeling of open space. This didn’t look like my papa’s sort of thing ... but I often wondered if my daughter would have been an artist of some kind ... or maybe not.
Weird debates about Angela were always present with me in the back of my mind, and this was the one getting stirred up then. Angela had liked to draw and make art; what would she have done if she had lived? Maybe if my daughter had been allowed to grow up, she could have explained this to me; helped me to understand how the big empty colours were making me feel both anxious and peaceful.
