WDYWFM

Contest index

Shine On, You Crazy Painter

Looking up, dark grey skies were all he
could see. He was about to leave his favourite
window when a sudden burst of light caught his
attention. Closing his eyes, he felt his pulse
quickening in anticipation of the delicate sound
of thunder. And swiftly it came, leaving the
house shaking, his whole body shivering...

As he opened his eyes, he found himself in
another world, staring at a white canvass.
He recognised it immediately, even though he
could not understand how he could have got there,
how he had managed to get back over thirty years
earlier. His little London apartment was exactly
as he remembered. The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields
Forever" was playing in the background and he was
about to paint his first masterpiece, one still
recognised as one of the finest work of his school.
Some sketches of his had already caught the
attention of the critics, one depicting a
transvestite even creating controversy and everyone
was eagerly looking forward to his first painting.
He saw himself skilfully using the brushes and
colours, his subjects slowly taking form: first,
the main character, a tall piper, riding a bike
nearby a huge gate, as the first rays of the sun
made their appearance. Yet, high above the
musician, one could still see Jupiter and, besides
it, lost after a long interstellar overdrive, a huge
ship flaming it way through. This Sci-fi atmosphere
was strangely diluted by the presence of a small
gnome, reading the twenty fourth chapter of a big
book, his Siam cat, hunting after a wild scarecrow.
Finally, in another corner, a mother in pow'R, was
sending back home a doctor and his stethoscope.
No spot on the canvass was left colourless, every
square inch of it displayed his vivid imagination.
All over England, he was hailed as a gifted painter,
thrust to the forefront of a new generation.

Another lightening brought him back into the
present, back into his huge million pounds mansion.
Things had change a lot since then, but rather slowly.
His next painting, titled "A Saucerful of Secrets",
depicting this huge flying saucer setting the controls
for the heart of the sun after leaving See Saw Land to
the sound of Corporal Clegg's Bleeding Hearts Jug Band,
was not as well received as "The Piper at the gates of
Dawn" had been. "Remember yesterday, put more light in
your work", he had been told. And "More", was what he
gave them next, a dramatic psychedelic painting with a
green girl and even more blue ones in a party sequence,
bathing in quicksilver, walking up the Khyber Pass, by
the Nile and even in Cirrus Minor, and flying as in
Ibiza or through a nightmare. But it was to late,
it seemed, and he had cried. But he didn't lost all
faith in himself and tried again. His fourth work got
the critics to revise their opinion once again.
It was divided in four parts, all describing the
symbolic journey he had made, first carrying a huge
burden up a steep hill, then meeting a wise Pict near
Grantchester Meadows, only to leave him trough a narrow
way leading to the Grand Vizier's court. Back in favour,
he then teemed with an fashionable artist of the time for
his fifth painting, depicting a man taking his breakfast
with his pace-maker mother under a fat old sun, lost in
the middle of a cow field back in the summer of '68.
The public liked it, but himself now sees it as a mere
draft he never really had the time to complete.
With his next two illustrations, however, he developed
his definite style, the one that would have him recognised
as the best painter of his generation. The first of
these, "Meddle" was the picture of a popular beach near a
very windy cliff. Above it, an albatross was looking down
on a howling dog. It's successor was that of a valley
obscured by clouds of smoke from a nearby burning bridge.
In it, once you'd figured what the deal was, you could see
gold, mud men, and four free teens looking for shelter
under a huge curtain.

Another lightning cut the sky, and once again he felt
that trance-like sensation. He was in for another trip to
the past. This time, he found himself ready to paint his
eighth project, probably his most famous, being the one
that made him known all around the world, also being the
very one that was sold for over 28 billion American dollars
in a recent auction. "The Dark Side of the moon", as it
was titled, was something he had conceived even before
"The Valley", although the final result was quite different
from what he had first thought of. In it's final state,
it depicted all types of things that drive people mad,
like work, travel, ageing, religion, fear of death, money,
war, stress and politics... Yet, all these things were
integrated in such a way that you could see that, even as
the dark side of the moon eclipsed the beauties of life,
it could not exist without the other side, the bright one,
the most important one. He could see himself presenting
his then-new effort to the crowd. It proved an instant
(well, almost) success... and soon everyone had one or
more reproductions in their households. The storm fetched
him back to the present once again, a present he built
thanks to that coloured canvass that is still selling so
well.

His following works were also considered masterpieces,
although somehow less spectacular. "Wish You Were Here"
was made for a friend he had not seen in years, having been
eaten by the machine, crushed under the gravy train...
On the picture, one could see this intimate shining like
diamonds... And who else but his long lost pal himself
showed up while he was working on it. Unfortunately,
didn't he understand what honour he was given. In spite of
this setback, this highly emotional achievement was later
deemed this painter's best ever by many connoisseurs.
His following effort was a simple picture of a farm in which
you could see three different pigs, dogs and sheep running
around and, weirdly, a flying pigs hovering above the scene
... Some denigrators said he had lost all imagination and
was merely plagiarising himself.
But he confounded them with his next painting. It was a
representation of his own face, surrounded by characters
from his own life and that of his friends. Amongst them,
his father, dead during the World War Two, a teacher who
disliked him, his over protective mother, his unfaithful wife,
a whore, Dame Vera Lynn, and a doctor.
Although you couldn't see any, it was titled "The Wall".
This canvass contained some of his most beautiful
accomplishment to date and is the second work of his that most
people will ever get to recognise. Yet, his twelfth work,
depicting the Falkland's war caught little attention. Indeed,
his school of art had fallen in disgrace among popular circles.
Suffering from nervous breakdown, he once again had to fight
through hard times. And once again he recovered, coming back
to the machine with "A Momentary Lapse of Reason", depicting a
river as it ran from a frosted land down to the sea, flowing
through many signs of life (birds learning to fly, and dogs to
hunt, for example) in spite of one slip and many turning away.
This was succeeded by a major exhibit of his works that toured
the world's greatest museums. Finally, his most recent work,
"The Division Bell", about the lack of communication in our
society, between the artist and his audience, as well as within
oneself, was heralded as a return to the purity of his style
and by other as his most beautiful since "Wish You Were Here".
Needless to say, all of his admirers had high hopes in the
future.

The delicate sound of thunder was now far away, lightning
were no more catching his attention, yet he kept watching and
was still beside the window when the morning came. As the sun,
he rose up and headed for his workshop. His night long
contemplation had given him some great ideas for his next work
of art; he only needed the material to make it happen.

Written Index