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Show 108 most abstract. You didn't paint what a thing was, you painted what it did. This did not help him locate her in relation to the other objects in the chair, but it relieved him of having to decide for the time being. As the context deepened he would have a better idea. He tilted her, head and infant downward, against one of the arms of the chair, and laid the lute across both arms and turned to the matter of the cane. The cane was a gift to Yvonne from Noel, who had bought it when he developed bursitis in one knee and had limped around on it for several weeks longer than he needed to. Sometimes, to amuse the customers at the Coach and Seven, he had pretended to play it like a flute, giving Lorin a searing pain down the length of his stomach as he stood at the sink making sandwiches or drawing coffee for those same customers. Yvonne had been amused at Noel's pranks with that cane, and when he was well he had given it to her; and now Lorin, holding it up to the light and examining the thumbprints on its glossy finish, wondered how best to assimilate its contours and associations into his study. As a shepherd's crook it would have to be lengthened and coarsened, and the lengthening would determine what part of the still-life it would occupy. As pure shape, though, it mirrored both the chair's curved back and the right angle of the lute's tuning head, and should properly be located at the opposite extreme on the canvas from one of those things, for balance. That meant that its function as shepherd's crook was already compromised by the demands of symmetry. It was possible, of course, that it wouldn't enter the picture as an object at all but as negative space between objects, in which case, so that it didn't cut the picture in two, it would have to be shrunk rather than lengthened. The two possibilities were equally attractive, and he decided to hold off committing himself to one or the other until he'd |
