A blank canvas. An expanse of stretched fabric. A long-handled paintbrush tapping on a resting thigh. The artist perched on a stool staring at the immensity of nothing. The canvas is primed and sealed with a layer of white acrylic, yet the texture of the fabric is subtly apparent. The artist focuses on the delicate stipple that breaks the tension of pure virgin white. It suggests possibility.
A figure stands on the edge of a deep green pool. Fronds of kelp sway with the incoming tide beyond the rocky edges, the barnacles, and exposed black mussels. The girl is poised, ready to dive, anticipating the freshness of the emerald depth.
The artist lifts her brush. She takes a daub of prussian blue, a smear of burnt umber and rhythmically blends them on her paint laden palette. The resultant green is the rich darkness of underwater shadows.
The girl lifts her arms, lengthens her calves, stretches upwards, then curves her body into the arc of a dive. The coolness of the sea envelops her as she breaks the surface and swims downwards towards patches of sand, the rocks and the delicate seaweed, the dark green shadows below. She empties her lungs and submits to gravity. A fish, a blur of silver and a smudge of black darts past the edge of vision.
Strokes of viridian green and cobalt blue swipe the surface of the canvas, blur the painted outline of a figure underwater, merge with the free movement of water muted flesh tints. Yellow ochre, raw sienna and alizarin crimson swirl as the light catches the kelp. Turpentine and linseed oil fill the air. A flash of metallic silver and a dab of lamp black. The brush movement stops. The tip of the handle comes to rest on the artist’s bottom lip.
Shards of painted porcelain from the bottom of the sea lie abandoned in a cracked saucer on the windowsill. The girl picks them up one by one. She turns and smiles.
The artist lays down her brush and moves from her easel to her desk. She arranges a selection of blue and white porcelain shards randomly next to a pad of pressed water colour paper. Sheselects a sable-hair brush and bends to her task, drawing and painting with meticulous precision. Then she takes a pair of scissors. She cuts around the edges until there are seven perfect paper porcelain shards. She fixes them to the canvas, in a free fall across the loose strokes of the girl swimming in the kelp.
She wipes away a tear and stares at a captured memory. She remembers that day, the day her lithe daughter bounded long legged along the beach to a favourite pool. They shared a passion for water and the sea, for swimming deep and long on a single breath. Not too deep, not too long she’d called after her first born who turned and waved, beaming as the sunshine caught her sea blonde curls. The mother smiles at the memory of it, at the happiness. As she remembers her daughter she thinks, with a mixture of pride and sadness, of those who push limits, of those who know that sometimes the limits push back. Of those that sometimes swim too deep too long.
Written by Fleur Hanikom, our South African SSBS member
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