Jazmyn Krause

In the Nude Chair

December 10, 2008 at 5:14 am (Uncategorized)

The living room of our home had always been white – a dull, dirtied white which invited no warmth and no discussion. Now they were even more bare: all the pictures had been removed, and plaster smeared over nail holes. We were preparing to paint; the colors had been selected, and they reflected my mother’s feeling of freedom now that the divorce was final, and her vivid personality, which we had each inherited. It was something she’d always wanted to do, but we had never had the time or the money.

Our dining room table had been pulled into the bare living room. Earlier that day, my mom had painted the dining room, and it was drying in the late afternoon sun. Now, in this moment, in our wide, sun-filled living room, with the large front windows flayed outwards (we had always wished those windows had a window-seat; they were picturesque and would have made the perfect reading corner), I was settled at the table. I guess I was too little to really help paint. I fancied myself an artist, though, and, in the spirit of things, had discovered some old finger paints hiding in our basement. I had pulled out loads of printer painter to explore my artistic ability. My mom and my two older sisters decided to join in the fun, and we had brushes and paper scattered across the table.

My oldest sister, Jennifer, with several shades of green before her, was spreading them across the page with such quick, fierce, short brushstrokes that the paint flailed around the room, spattering along our white living-room walls. As she decorated not only her paper but also the walls, Jennifer was chanting, “I am a genius,” giving an extra flourish on “genius”. We laughed as we watched her, but continued plugging away at our own work. Finally, she leapt from her chair, ran across the living room, past the entranceway, and down the hallway to her bedroom. She returned shortly, carrying a lipstick tube. We watched, enthralled, as she pulled the top off the lipstick, smeared a single streak across the painting, and, with a self-satisfied smirk, recapped the tube. She held up the completed product proudly, shades of green crisscrossed across the page randomly, and, over it all, a single pink line.

“I have entitled it In the Nude Chair, or, I am a Genius.” And we laughed, altogether, aware that “In the Nude Chair” was her favorite lipstick shade solely because of its name. It made sense that she would incorporate it into her work, if only because it amused her. As we sat in our home, the furniture in disarray, the dining room walls still drying, we laughed, we talked, and we painted. The sun, which had illuminated the living room, faded into night as we whiled away the hours in one another’s company. And, a few weeks later, when the entire house was painted and the walls dry, we hung our artwork on the walls, with Jennifer’s In the Nude Chair in a place of honor – right over where most of the paint from her brush had landed on the wall.