A Short Study of Friends

A Short Study of Friends

a response to In the Studio by Marie Bashkirtseff (France) 1881


As I stood there painting, I wondered over my artist friends at their different preoccupations around the studio. Anne had been halfway through mixing the paint on her palette when Georgette came by, putting some short, quick remark to her from behind. Anne looked up over her shoulder at her, dark eyes puzzled and searching. I made out a sense of disbelief in her face that said Georgette had crossed a sort of line saying what she had. For her part, Georgette stood there tense, as if to sympathize with the shock she knew she had given. If only I knew what it was about.


A short way from Anne, Giselle dabbed at the small canvas on the chair before her. She held her extra-long brush near its end (a difficult way to paint in my mind) as she filled in part of her portrait. After making a few strokes, she stared at the top of her brush, then the half-finished picture on her canvas, as if weighing some choice she would make. It went on that long I wondered what prevented her from deciding. All I got for puzzling was to see her smile at the portrait and to find Francoise and Odette on her left smirking, wondering over Giselle much like I was.


Back behind almost everyone else, Adele held before her the portrait of the boy posing for us on the platform. She looked over the lines in the painted face as she might her own reflection in the mirror. She stood there firm as a post, resolved to see her painting in the most honest terms. She was interested especially in the boy's eyes that I had seen her give much labor. Perhaps she wondered if she had captured his distant gaze the best way. Or why the painting seemed to show him older than he was. She kept looking and never found an answer that satisfied her as far as I could tell.

But the strangest sight of all was Pauline by her easel directly across the room from me. She gave me these questioning looks in between adding touches to her canvas. Was I quite alright?, her dark eyes asked more than once. What could I mean scrutinizing her from all the way over there? She seemed keener on putting the questions to me after a while than in her painting. I suppose she had a point, though it hit me rather hard. I admit now I had been judging and sizing up everyone else as if I were invisible to them without thinking they might do the same back.


Norbert Kovacs



Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He has published short fiction in Blink Ink, Timada's Diary, and Ekphrastic Review. His website: www.norbertkovacs.net.




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