I drop my satchel inside the door and head for my studio in the basement. The large canvas is on the easel, where I left it when I went off to school eight months ago. On it are the crude beginnings of a nude portrait of Tecca, reclined in the manner of Ingres’ Grande Odalisque. When I abandoned it, it was only a rough gesture of the grace of her body. I had no patience for Titian layers. I appied too much paint, too soon. I aimed for Rembrandt and landed on De Kooning. I jumped around the canvas too much. I built up details at random; the arch of her foot, the slight upturn of her nose, that secret freckle. I have a heavy hand when it comes to painting. I can't bring myself to omit details, and omissions are necessary if you hope to force the plastic illusion. Beneath her slender body I'd painted in a turn of the century chaise lounge (in reality, she had assumed her enchanting supine pose on my twin bed). In the background I painted harsh vertical hash marks. These were intended to be the foundations for drapery folds, but I’d barely roughed in this under-painting when I realized the portrait was doomed to failure. I couldn’t get the details to harmonize. Her face wasn’t face quite right. The tone of her olive skin evaded me. 

     I’ve lived with this damned failure for almost year now, leaving it out in the open so I’d be forced to look at it, forced to address its many problems. I thought a solution would present itself. I thought it would eventually rise up out of the germinal brushwork, but no matter how often I searched the pale pigment of this portrait’s ghostly beginnings no answer was revealed. I tried to force a solution by fanning in blushes of peach and olive. I gessoed it and started fresh three times, borrowing compositions from the masters. I altered Tecca’s pose, contorted her body. I blended in whole groves of fruit, but no amendments seemed to mimic the fecund fruit of her body. Now she has been overworked. She is a muddy mess. The canvas appears iced with fondant.

     I know now, with certainty, that this portrait will never amount to more than this vague under-painting. It will never be more than her ghost. Looking back, I knew it the whole time. And frankly, I’m sick of being haunted. I pry the rusty lid from a quart of black paint and I blot her out.