And my dress! It had cost more than my entire wardrobe back at home, and I was sure to get paint on it. No. I would have to be careful. I could be neat and tidy if I wanted to be.
Jean-Luc was speaking to me again as he finished setting up my brushes on a stand next to the easel. All of the other artists were ready, their easels set up in a semi-circle around the middle of the room.
“Perhaps you will sign a deal. I would be interested in commissioning a mural piece here in Paris.”
“A mural?” I was so dumbfounded that I could only repeat his words.
“Yes. Public art is very important to the French, you see. A two-week project, fully funded for three hundred thousand.”
“Three-three hundred thousand dollars?”
“Euros. But the price is negotiable. You must sign.”
The rest of the artists seemed to be waiting for us to finish our conversation. I opened my mouth to speak.
“I—sure,” I blurted out. “Sure. Let’s talk about it later.”
“Excellent,” Jean Luc said, smiling. “Yes, we will.”
He clapped his hands and any remaining noises stopped.
The first woman who had come in stepped into the front of the room. It was then that I saw she was wearing a robe—and nothing else— under her coat. She pulled the robe down from her shoulders and stood in front of all of us, completely exposed.
“Oh.” I spoke the word out loud as I realized that yes, it was that kind of class. The two artists on either side of me glanced my way. I flushed and busied myself with arranging Jean-Luc’s paintbrushes.
I wanted to focus on sketching out the nude woman in front of me, but Jean-Luc hadn’t given me any pencils and I was too darn nervous to ask. Instead, I began using a palette knife to do big color blocks for the background. I would work on the woman herself later.
Jean-Luc went around the studio. It seemed apparent that a few of the artists were students. They actively asked him for help. I grew distracted watching him talk with the artist next to me. He’d done a charcoal sketch of the woman in no time at all, it seemed. But Jean-Luc was critical, pointing out places where his lines were choppy.
When he came over to me, I hadn’t done anything but block out the back of the woman’s figure. He saw me watching the other artist’s canvas, the one he had critiqued.
“What do you think of his work, Miss Mills?”
“I—I think he’s very talented,” I said. The artist that Jean-Luc was talking about pretended not to hear our conversation.
“Do you think that art is about talent?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. It’s about desire.”
I looked at him levelly. His dark eyes burned into me. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wasn’t going to cower in front of him.
“Alright, shoot,” I said.
“Shoot?” He tilted his head, looking confused.
“Why is art about desire?”
“Oh! No, that’s not quite what I meant. I meant that the desire to do art—the need to create—that is what drives people to greatness. Not talent.”
“You don’t think talent exists?”
“I think that the amount of inherent talent differs from person to person. Yet greatness comes more from practice and desire than it does from talent.”
I frowned. My teachers had always told me that I was very talented at art. It was the one talent I really had. But now Jean-Luc was telling me that talent was overrated.
“You don’t think you have to have talent to be a great painter?” I asked.
“All the great painters I have known have all loved the art more than anything else they do. They love it more than food, more than air. They see a paintbrush, and their fingers itch.”
He raised his hand with those words, smoothing his fingertips together. I was mesmerized by his slim, strong hands.
“Now paint,” he said. He took my hand up abruptly. I caught my gasp in my throat and swallowed it back down.
“Paint what you feel. Isn’t that what you said? That you paint feelings? Emotion?”
“Yes.” My face was burning, but I stared valiantly at the canvas in front of me. I knew what I was going to paint. Jealousy. Envy.
“Good. Then this is your chance to show me what you really feel.”
With that, he walked away.
What I really feel. I don’t know what he was trying to imply. Or if I had simply misunderstood. If I looked in from the outside, it seemed obvious that he was flirting with me. And yet, I could sense that he was staying back, as though deliberately, in the shadows.
Did I want to see what was hidden, back there in the dark?
I bit my lip, keeping the thoughts at bay, and began to paint.