Paintings Of Life

• Calinda Surenne, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2018

The first canvas is plain and simple, a stark contrast to all the other artworks. In the middle of the average, snow white canvas, is just a black dot.
Next, in the series, looks the exact same, except for one thing, it has colour. Yellow surrounds the dot in short strokes, framing it like warm rays of light from the shining sun at its highest peak. Optimism and life, new life, it whispers sweetly to me.
The third canvas has new colours. Pink circles the larger dot smoothy, leaving bits of white showing. Light blue and green, like rolling hills and the clear sky, are splashed all over the crisp white. Love, growth, discovery…
The next is like a raging storm in the middle of the calm sea, that all the canvas form. The canvas has a small white dot almost drowned out by black, navy, deep red and gray. Depression, reality and anger. But, amidst the silence and despair, faint tinges of yellow glow with hope.
The fifth comes next with passion and pleasure, survival and success. Rings and rings of striking colours surround each other with shades of red and orange, green and gold. They blend, they mix, they dance and continue.
The last of them is more calm with hues of purple and shades of blue alongside pink splotches and patches of yellow. The colours now show a sense of wisdom, intuition and trust, an understanding of life. Pink for love accompanied by self-knowledge and esteem. Enthusiasm and enlightenment for what is to come.
I look over at the artist standing tall next to his paintings, a picture of sophistication and wisdom himself.
I open my mouth to ask, ‘How, when so young, you know how it feels to live life?’. But he just looks at me. Just looks at me with those eyes he owns, that lead you to believe as if they have went through so very much. Experienced so many painful things as well as the truly happy moments you live for and the thrill of success. In the end, I end up looking like a goldfish for I close my mouth because I have my answers.
He knows… he just, knows.
I walk away then, as an old man, an old man that knows how it is to live life, just like the man I left behind me.