It was my first week in my new painting class. We were looking at images of fruit. From Dutch masters to Cezanne. Our first assignment followed shortly thereafter: to paint a bowl of fruit. That was it. Paint a bowl of fruit.

I didn’t like it. I was mad. It seemed so formal. I had never painted a bowl of fruit. I had never thought about painting a bowl of fruit. I first thought about actually painting a bowl of fruit. That is, get some fruit, get a bowl, and paint a painting on the bowl and on the fruit. But I gave this up. I can’t remember why. Perhaps I wasn’t quite brave enough to take the instructions that literally. Perhaps I wasn’t convinced I was competent enough to paint on grapes. I then decided to buy some fruit and a glass bowl. I left the fruit out for as long as I could, just a few days before the assignment was due. It attracted flies. It smelled horrible. My roommates were intensely displeased and threatened to kick me out. One was a business major. One was a political science major. They really had quite a lot to put up with with a Visual Arts roommate. They overlooked the smell of oil paints. They overlooked my rags in the trash. They didn’t even mind much that I painted nearly naked in my room. It wasn’t some sort of ego ritual. It was just easier to clean up that way. But this was too much. Rotting fruit? Flies? That horrible smell.

Well, I let it rot just as long as I could. And then I got a nice white linen table cloth and I bought a shiny new glass bowl and I put the rotting stinky fruit in the bowl and I flipped the bowl upside down squashing a few wrinkled grapes, a blackened banana, and a particularly squishy tomato which erupted in an acrid mess. And spotted the linen quite cheerfully in what could have passed for blood. Luckily the flies returned.

I worked obsessed, I remember that. The white linen, the shiny bowl, and the dead fruit made for a gorgeous image. I added a few more flies than there actually were. I worked through the night. In the morning I was done. I collected the fruit and the ruined linen and, rather uncharitably, I swatted the flies and I threw out the whole festering mess.

My roommates, seeing the painting, forgave me. And my new painting teacher who I was quite unsure of enthused, “I love it.” It was a good painting. Tragically, in a darker time, I sold the painting. Probably for food. I’ve always meant to do another.

My point. Some of my best stuff has been created out of a corner. Creativity, as I said before here, works best within confines, within parameters. I don’t offer this word creativity as some mystic idol. Creativity is one of those words that means too much and too little at the same time. I make stuff. I write stuff. I paint stuff. That’s all I mean.

SS