"Tabby? We got a delivery last night."
"Good timing. I was just making my final notes on what to rotate on to display. Let's see if any of these need to take priority. Who is the artist?"
"Ian."
Tabby smiled. There would almost definitely be a reshuffling of pieces. Ian's things were almost always pushed to the forefront of displays.
She and her assistant unwrapped the pieces and propped them against the walls to get a first read. He had sent over three paintings this time. If all of them went on display this month she'd have to redo her notes as to which pieces to take down. She had been going to keep one of his older pieces that seemed to be drawing a large crowd, but maybe it was time to rotate that one out? Or maybe one of the 6 new pieces she already had on her list would be bumped to next month.
"What do you think inspires him? I mean, they are all clearly his work, but they are all so different from each other."
Tabby nodded. That was the essence of Ian's work. Clearly his. Clearly different. Clearly off. Just a touch. There was always something in them that didn't sit right when you looked at it. And it was almost impossible to say why. His work left her patrons off kilter, but fascinated and ready to come back for more.
"I don't know. I'd like to feature him on a First Thursday sometime. Get him to come talk with his fans. But..."
She trailed off. Since they had no idea who he was, or how to contact him that was an impossible dream. She could feature him all she liked, but actually getting him in the gallery? Not likely.
She took in the new pieces. Her normal way of viewing a new piece was to take it in as a whole. Just let the art loom large. Not focus on any one piece, just the overall feeling. Then she would go back and look at the details. It was the way she had judged what hung on the walls of her gallery since they opened the doors. The initial feeling always let her know if it was going up or going back to the artist, or into the vault waiting to be claimed. It didn't mean she particularly liked the piece or not, it just meant she knew what moved her would move others. And that's what she felt art should be. Does it speak to you in some way? Does it make you feel something?
It might not be as good of a system as judging the styles, the influences, the line weights or composition or any other long list of things she'd heard art majors talk about in her gallery and in lectures. But it was her system and it was a good one for The Crypt. And she consistently stuck to it.
Until now.
The third piece that was propped against her wall was impossible to judge in that way.
She tried. She stepped back and tried to take in the whole piece but she kept staring at the details.
She tried to get a feel for the overall piece and how her patrons would react but she couldn't.
Her heart was pounding and her breath was starting to get short. She was hyperventilating.
"Tabby? Tabby? Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
She knelt down in front of the picture and put her hand on it. Feeling the paint under her fingers. It was real. This piece was here.
She took a slow breath and tried to clear her head. Rocking back on to her ass. Sitting and staring at the painting. "What do you see here?"
Her assistant was used to Tabby asking her opinion on works, but never like this.
"Umm, it's...well is it a car crash? I'm not sure. There isn't another car, just this one in the corner that is wrecked, but the swirls of dark and red, maybe they are the crash?"
"Tell me about the car. What do you see?"
"It's not really distinctive, except for that bright yellow color. I mean, like I couldn't tell you what kind of car it is, just I know it's a car. I know it's yellow. I know it's been in a wreck at some point because it's dented up here, crinkled. I think he chose yellow because it stands out so starkly against the black and red background. It makes it the first thing your eye is drawn to. Like the painting is about the car. But it's also so small compared to the canvas that it can't be about the car. Like the car is there, but it's not the point."
She watched Tabby to see if she passed. Which was dumb because Tabby had never made anyone feel like they had to pass a quiz on art appreciation, or even ever view a painting the way you were "supposed to" art was to be felt. That was Tabby's only lecture.
Tabby agreed with everything that her assistant had said, the only difference is her eye was drawn to the car not just because of the bright yellow, but because it had been in her dreams for as long as she could remember. It was her stress nightmare. The car she was always in when she drove off the bridge. When the road ended suddenly in an ocean. When she was on railroad tracks and couldn't get off. When she lost control and crashed into...
This was her recurring nightmare. On a canvas. In her gallery.
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