Max Locke
A story about a painter
Max hated it when people associated chaos with his paintings. He wouldn’t say that they were wrong, but he’d never admit that they were right either. Calling them chaos, to him, meant that you didn’t look into it enough. Calling them chaos stripped away the technique, the discipline, and all the time spent on each drip on the canvas; it undervalued the amount of work being put in, or so he’d say. As much as he hated it, he didn’t try changing people’s minds, he just continued to paint. That’s what he would do every time, he would get angry that you got it all wrong and then continue painting. He didn’t have time to put into words how right he was or how wrong you were; dripping paint onto the canvas was the way he proved himself.
Our relationship was defined by his paintings… or by himself… I’m not so sure which of those two depict whatever we had going better, but to be completely honest with you, there wasn’t much of a difference between the two. His persona just poured out on the canvas to such close resemblance that they were indistinguishable. Oftentimes at night, when he was asleep, I would sneak in the barn where he had his studio and I’d look at his paintings. I wanted to see what an unfinished painting looks like, what an unfinished him looks like. And they were there, he was there, in each of them; every part of himself was splayed bare on the canvas. The unfinished works, I could see how they would play out. I knew Max, I knew his paintings, I knew what followed to cover the empty spots on the canvas, I knew where the blotches would be and where he would swirl each line, I knew it all, but I could never get to do it myself. It wouldn’t come out right, the canvas wouldn’t accept me, it’s like it knew I wasn’t him, it just knew I wasn’t Max.
The first time I went into his studio I was too scared to go back to bed. I was afraid of lying down beside him. What if instead of his balding head I’d just see an empty canvas peering out of the blanket? I just slept in the barn whenever that happened. I got over it eventually. I went into his studio enough times to realise that his paintings and himself were two mirrors looking into one another.
—
he drips around his careless words
and drags them into lines
he throws them down around your eyes
and blinds you into love.
Bucket: hidden well beneath the bed
One look: impossible to take
Hearts: Hidden well within the metal bounds
Conclusion: One more
This is the poem that I wanted to show you. I wrote it after Max passed. It’s not about his death, and I never intended to write it about that either. Max is well and alive, go to any exposition of his and he’s there, waving his cigarette or gin at you. But for me, it’s not about him being alive or not, he left me in other ways that I can’t forgive him for. He wasn’t alone in the car when it crashed. His mistress was there too. She got out.
We had our problems as a couple but jealousy was never a problem for either of us. We trusted each other and now, looking back at it, I seem to have trusted him a bit too much. I’ve been told many times before getting with Max not to marry him. Everyone knew and everyone rambled and repeated the same clichés: artists are womanisers, they mess with your head, they lure you in and suck you dry of life so they can paint; things like that. ‘Fuck any of that,’ I’d tell them, ‘I’m an artist myself.’ I thought I could handle him, I knew I could handle him. For all my life alongside him, I had the impression that I was handling him. I thought I grasped the reins tight and that I was going to manage to stay on for the entire ride ahead of us. But Max, much like his paintings, had no shapes to grab onto. He flowed freely, swirling mid-air in such controlled aimlessness that it was mesmerising to watch. It’s odd to say — and even more odd for me to admit that it brings me comfort — but Max wasn’t a man, he was an artist in the purest form. He was too stubborn and passionate about his art, too full of pride. No matter what he had to paint and that is all he did.
We had an awful fall-out a few summers ago. I’ve grown quite fond of acting it out. If you won’t mind, I’d much rather do so rather than describing it to you.
“I’m just asking for one god damned second, Max!” He was walking towards his studio, running away as I screamed.
“One more second of your nonsense and I’ll dry out.”
“So you’re just gonna go paint?”
A stupid question to ask Max, a normal thing for a wife to ask her husband in a situation like that.
“You’re in there all day! Would it kill to spare some time for me?”
He kept on walking, ignoring me.
“I paint too but you don’t see me running away whenever you want to fuck or want me to go and buy you another bottle of gin.”
“Is that it, you want to fuck?
“No, Max… what? That’s not it! That’s not it at all. How are you missing the entire point?”
“I’m not missing anything, Lee.”
“I’m your wife, Max, that’s what you’re missing. You don’t get to ignore me as you please.”
“I’m not ignoring anything. I’ve got my priorities and I’ve spent too much time away already. I gotta go paint.”
Those words are what showed me a glimpse of how little I actually knew.
“You’re incredible, simply incredible.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, dear.”
“Oh come on! Is dripping a bunch of paint more important than me?”
“I’m an artist for Christ’s sake, of course it’s more important! It is the only thing that matters. You think art just pops out of the barn by itself? Do you think I just go to sleep and dream my next work, that I just fucking drink some gin and puff a smoke and get my inspiration? Someone has to break their back for it, Lee, and that someone is me.”
It ended there. I went back into the house and cried my way through packing my things. All my brushes and most of my clothes; that’s all I needed. I didn’t take with me any of my paintings. That wasn’t just because I couldn’t carry them, I just didn’t want anything that Max influenced to follow me. You can probably guess what Max was doing in the meantime, and, if you can’t, I’ll tell you anyhow: he was doing the only thing he knew how to do besides drinking and flirting up women.
If you’re wondering if I came back to him, I did. I always did. He was brilliant. I couldn’t resist staying away from the world he dripped around himself. I knew from the very beginning how much his paintings meant to him, how much value art had. I knew, yet I didn’t want to accept it and hid it deep within to the point that I had forgotten. Seeing myself as an artist, I thought I was different. I thought that attribute, the fact that I also painted, was enough to understand Max. Only after our fall-out did I realise that the act of painting alone does not make you an artist. It’s as he said, you have to break your back for it. You have to sacrifice everything for art’s sake. It’s not enough just to be willing to sacrifice, you actually have to go and do it, only then can you call yourself an artist. I couldn’t fathom giving up any part of me or my life just so my paint rests with ease on the canvas. But the more time I spent away from Max, the more I realised that he embodied art and the artist. Once the realisation was made, I was ashamed of myself. How could I have considered myself an artist, a being similar to that of his, when I wasn’t willing to give anything up? And so I did, right before coming back to him, I made my first sacrifice; I gave up my feelings for my husband. With them gone, I began to learn once more. I learned to love the man with a brush and a bucket of paint in his hand for what he was, an artist, and not for what I once wanted him to be. No longer was he a man, or my husband. He wasn’t Max anymore, and neither was he ‘love’ or ‘dear’ or whatever the hell we had going on. He was Max Locke; The American Painter in its purest form.
That’s what I get, I suppose, for falling in love with an artist, a man blurred by blotches of good paint.
