Bono Wannabe's 'Red': A Review Of Paintings

He brought the brush to the canvas, carefully mixed in an assortment of reds and blues and waited for the next stroke. It had taken him five hours just to mix the paint and when he brought the finely tipped horse hair brush to the canvas, he couldn’t do it. The vision he had thought on for 4 months just wouldn’t come, it just couldn’t be converted into the frame.

What had happened to him over the years? Once he was running around the studios of New York, working non-stop to meet the next gallery exhibit and from there the drugs to stay up all night. The sex and the fun and the money beginning to come in, he became the bon vivant of the studio set. That was over 10 years ago and now he sat there thinking, the brush now resting on the easel as he said out loud, “success had ruined me.” He was like some sort of Bono wannabe, forced to paint for causes and always going out with syncophants and toadies who worshipped and adored him work.
His work really consisted of 1 painting and it was simply entitled “Red”.
It was of a lover from long ago with distended features all painted out of proportion and then brought down to earth in muted reds. A cigarette with a gold tipped filter mixed in with the hand(s) that gripped it looking back forlornly at the viewer. It had established a then record auction of $11 million and had made him. A record for a living artist and he was then young, watching the Japanese and Chinese eagerly buy up anything he
made.

When he got sick of the lack of sleep and the sex and the drugs he had made his way to a small Midwestern university and became a painter in residence. Cutting his hair and no longer wearing earrings, he made derivatives of ‘Blue’ that he eventually had to ruin because no one wanted him, overnight he had become passe.

So five years passed and he became increasingly reclusive, not meeting with anyone any more. Teaching a class a year where all he did was wander from grad student to grad student, giving them all A+’s for their work. Never commenting, never finding his muse. He would go home and night and drink himself to sleep to awake the next morning and sit and stare at the easel.

His muse never coming.

Bored and disgusted, he saw his cigarette pack was empty and headed down to the local pub to get a pint and more cigs. Maybe the inspiration would come to him tomorrow.