"Chinngg-Chinnngg", came the sound of the bell as Pam walked through the door. Her eyes went instantly to the tattoo samples on the wall of the shop. Pam hadn't even noticed the store before, mostly because it still had the name of the hardware store that had closed six years ago over the top of the building. Jane, a friend from the tennis club had told Pam...
Many years ago my mother-in-law commissioned a female artist to do a painting of my wife (her daughter) and our children. My wife, thirty-one years old at the time, went to her studio with the kids and Julia, the painter, told she wanted to sketch the boys before they got bored and the wife in a second time. In two sessions the kids were done so the wife beg...
It was a cloudy nasty Saturday in the early spring and I had told Elle to come by around 11am to my condo. I use my apartment to teach private students to amplify my income. Unfortunately, I use the room towards the back, and its on the other side of the complex from lovely Lisa's window. It has the best light for a studio and I've added a comfortable dark l...
There is always one in every class. Sometimes more but at least, always one. I was being as still as I could, sweating a little under the bright lights of the classroom. My naked body was on full display as I stood there, hands on my hips, left legs bent at the knee. The students were all around me, walking, studying, sketching or painting my picture on thei...
(But It Depends on the Gifts) 1 Following the Virgin Whirlwind in Spain and the Double in the Canaries, I tried Mallorca the following year. This time the linguistic dimension was less in evidence, though I was dealing with another, this time young, novice. I'm not sure that term was used in 1997, but I was stalked, or, given the build of the stalker, 'st...
I'm a photographer- usually, the old school kind. You know, the type that likes to hang out in a dark room alone for hours at a time, getting a buzz from smelly chemicals and watching images magically appear on paper underwater. My tranquil landscapes and my grimy urban photos share something very important- a lack of people. I'm a typical angsty artist some...
"Ah, here you are, Jane, I've been looking for you for weeks!" I looked up to see the strawberry blond from the park. The park I had been avoiding for two weeks. The girl I'd been avoiding. Her smile was mysterious, like Mona Lisa's. Her accent was impossible to place, sort of French with a little British and maybe a little Swedish intonation. She smelled o...
I stare at her, shocked. "What ... what nude of me?" Her grin widens into a full-fledged smile. "Well, I guess you'll have to model for me so I can draw one." She reaches over to stroke my neck again. My nipples are tingling, my skin is all gooseflesh. She leans in for another soft, soft kiss, gently tugging at my nipple through the silk. Her eyes are ful...
I'd always had a thing for artists. What was it about them? Not their looks—that's for sure. Didn't matter what a guy looked like, whether he was embarrassingly young or decrepitly old, big or small in any direction. If he was an artist, I was into him. From afar. I never had the confidence to actually approach a guy. I figured I wasn't an artist's type. S...
It goes like this; you find inspiration where you can get it. I'm painting. It is here that I am most myself, here where I gain the substance and meaning of life. This is my best reality. I am absorbed, deep into the slide of the paint, probing and revealing an inner world that hasn't been visited until now. She's there on the canvas, in a bed of stars...