ESCAPISM

My father was always an artist. As a child, he would get distracted sketching some caterpillar or leaf, and turn up late to school most mornings. Caning was still in practice in those days, but it didn’t seem to discourage him. He came from wealthy parents who never really cared what he did with his time, and so he was able to go to art school in his early twenties. He could paint beautifully, but never managed to make anything of note, and when my mother became a wedding planner he settled quite cheerfully into his new role. They worked wonderfully together. She was in charge of the business end of things, always a practical woman, and he lived his days in a fog of colour schemes and bridal bouquets. He still painted in his free time, and he was happy.  

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The one colour that he never used was yellow. He said it was the shade of heartache. He was never an emotional man, my father, not erratic or volatile at all, but in his early days of art school, he had attempted to mould himself into a tortured genius. He kept himself awake all night in the hopes of insomnia. He drank and smoked and isolated himself, waiting for the agony of inspiration to strike. The day that he met my mother, in a student bar close to his apartment, he left with no intention of calling her. Artists did not simply settle down at twenty. There were many years of suffering to come first. He put all thoughts of dark eyes and slender fingers from his mind, and picked up a paintbrush.

The next day in class they read about Vincent van Gogh – a man who lived from breakdown to breakdown just like my father intended, undiscovered and brilliant. In 1888, Gogh rented four rooms in a yellow house in the south of France. He wanted it to become a sanctuary for friends and likeminded people. He wanted artists to spill and sprawl and laugh their way through every room, drawing and painting, teaching and listening. He wanted the walls of the house to glisten and melt, engulfing them all in clouds of bliss and yellow paint.  

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One person turned up. His name was Gauguin, and they argued feverishly for two months before the man gave up and stormed away. He did not return. That night, Gogh cut off his ear, and then in 1890, he killed himself.  

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My father stood up in class, excused himself, and called my mother. He gave up any notion of martyred torment, and lived for love instead. His paintings were beautiful, and unknown, and he died at the age of 89, holding my mother’s hand. The wake was crowded. He had lived a full life, and that life was going to miss him. In the middle of everything, in between the black suits and skirts and tear-stained faces, in between the buffet table and the heavy tang of loss, my mother stood, straight-backed and striking in a yellow suit, embroidered from head to toe in sunflowers.