Amy Souza
Inspiration piece
Dominic Mazzilli
Response
Mad, Crazed, Insane, a hundred whispers surround the painter, but he does not listen, there is no time. He dashes and rubs and swipes, soon his hands will be completely indistinguishable from his work. He takes up his buckets and, Splash! He sends a swelling wave of golden yellow from left to right. Splash! He counters it with a furious, rosey red: right to left. After sending a blurred yellow atop it with quick, undefined dashes, the background is complete. Does yellow lay waste to the cowering red? Does red triumph over the infinite yellow? Who knows? No time.
Swishing up and down, left and right, like a spider weaving a web he creates the shadowed ghost of a net, half constructed bonds, are they for him? Are they simply catching dreams? Are they sifting the gold in which they sit? Who knows? No time.
He barely hesitates before he takes to the sea of red, trailing new lines and circles of red with his most recent path. He jots a short, strong horizontal dash the color of coal, below it a vertical twin: is it a T? Truth then? A Test? But he dashes another below it, now the bottom of the figure resembles a sailboat: a journey? A storm? Before his mind can process these ideas he he dashes a F without its top to the right and a splotch of white below: a bird? A daisy? Who knows? No time.
He now takes his black paint adorned hand and slaps the wet canvas over the figures, he is not sure why, wishing to ponder this action, but then he is off again faster than ever. Dipping his fingers in a sky blue he dashes a quick curve, isolating the top right corner, ready to burst off elsewhere. But, this time he does pause: why did I do that? He wonders, it is a lonely blue line in a sea of red and yellow, barely the width of a finger, lonely like he is. No time.
He dips his hands in that coal black, and paints. Five black, demanding rings down the middle, they burst from the color in a fury of darkness, perhaps they are chains, or armor, perhaps the rings of a circus or the circles of life, perhaps wedding bands or the eyes of god. They intersect and collide, he does not know why or what they are, but he paints them, he only knows they are important. He goes round and round, always tracing them faster and faster, making them even more demanding, they burn into his soul yet he does not stop, only going faster still.
And then he falls, collapsing from exhaustion as though he is clothing that just lost its contents, hitting the hard floor below and crumpling under his own weight. A smile plays across his lips, and as he slips into the strong embrace of sleep, the last thing he sees are those five dark rings.
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