Inspiration

The artist stared at the blank canvas. It stared back at him, taunting him, daring him to start work on it. It had been taunting him for three days. Every possible brushstroke felt like a step towards failure. At the moment, the canvas was perfect, every possibility represented in its creamy white expanse. As soon as he began work, he would change that, honing down the endless possibilities to mirror the thoughts flowing endlessly through his head. Currently, each of those thoughts seemed equally worthless.

His last work had been different. It had seemed to paint itself onto the canvas with little or no effort on his part. When he had finished, he had known he would never produce anything as beautiful again. Now, the public expected a new work and he knew he could only disappoint them.

Suddenly, impulsively, the artist leaned forward and placed a dark slash of colour on the canvas. A blue mark, thicker at the top, breaking the vast emptiness. He didn't know why he had done it. He stared, terrified at his own audacity. He couldn't go back now. It was...it was...it wasn't bad. Possibilities swam before the artists eyes: it was a figure - a figure dancing - but scared - scared of the onlookers - dancing for its life. But the blue was too light. And now he looked, the mark was uneven - not right at all. The images that had been parading before his eyes fled into the darkness. The artist looked at the canvas, marked, ruined.

Suddenly, the artist was a madman. Eyes wide, thin beard framing the rictus of his mouth, he attacked the canvas. First he beat it with his fists. When that was not enough, he began throwing paint against it - first his neatly prepared palette, which stuck like a custard pie than slowly slid to the floor leaving smears of colour behind it. The paint brush swiftly followed. It bounced off disappointingly and left a blue mark on his shoe. For some reason, this didn't satisfy the rage, so he began to throw everything - inks, oils, powder paint, even the tins of house paint he kept for murals and installation work.

When he was done, he sank to the floor, fury spent, and looked upon his destruction. It was beautiful. Colours lay where there should be no colour, shapes leapt out from within the randomness producing thoughts and images that had no right to be there, but spoke to the demons within his soul. It needed some work - he could fix it with a fine brush later - increasing the contrasts, teasing out the subtle images to draw the eye and the mind - but it was a masterpiece. His best work ever.

And then the artist wept, because he had finished and he knew he would never produce anything as beautiful again.