Featured in the 2014 Fall Issue of Rambunctious
By Zev Anbar, ’16
She stared at the paper, her mind blank. The colors just didn’t fit together, they didn’t work. Regardless she dipped her brush into the paint, first the blue then the green mixing them together. Slowly, ever so slowly, she applied the paint to the canvas watching as stars took shape and their light bled through. Everywhere she turned new images were forming, blossoming from nothing. Jade flowers, grass so green it was almost blue, everything was there swirling around her. Dozens of paintings, all on professional canvas, all signed with her name Caramece Tepier. Caramece turned back to her canvas, but it was no longer blank, instead it was filled with colors, all the colors her imagination could come up with.
They were all woven together, smoothly flowing from black, to red, to green, to white, to flesh tone. She was staring at an angel. She had never done such a realistic painting before; it was as if the angel breathed. It stood on the canvas, the only bright point in front of a muted backdrop. As she watched, the painting changed, the angel appeared to be coming closer, its glowing white wings taking up all the space.
Then it was there.
Not just a painting on canvas, but a living breathing angel, the same angel that she had somehow painted on her canvas. It smiled kindly and held out its hand. Caramece took it and watched in awe as all the already magical colors became brighter, more real. She watched as the brush strokes in flowers morphed into veins, as the dark blue sky became smoother, richer in color and more open. It almost seemed to her that Heaven was opening up its gates and letting her see inside. It was everything she ever dreamed of.
“Cara! Caramece, wake up!” Maria Tepier stepped carefully around the discarded canvases towards her daughter, who had fallen asleep at her easel. “Cara up, up!”
But Caramece did not wake, nor did she move. Maria did not bother to check her daughter’s breathing. Knowing what had happened, she gently bent down and removed the palate from her daughter’s limp hand. Looking at the impression of wings that the brush had left in the paint, Maria bent down and kissed Caramece’s bald head before leaving the room.