CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

LVIII: Yesteryears

A bust went down that September. Late. Humidity giving a last hurrah as it burned across the growing corn fields and shivered burgeoning pumpkin patches. Cops swarmed Ol’ North Main like ants on a sugar spoon, wrapping cuffs about old and young alike with little regard to uncles and grand-daddy’s.

Casey got picked up. Fourteen years old, drunk off canned beer with a stolen fifty in his pocket. Taylor L. got picked up too. Taylor Lee Barry got pushed through processing, then yanked at the very last because grand-daddy came in roaring like a fury, spouting about bad choices and last chances.

No one came to yank Casey out at the last second.

Brendon had the audacity to think it all unfair. He’d been more worried about Casey getting out and dodging his father’s belt rather than being mindful of a future more dreary and far more difficult for his friend.

“Glad you’d skipped that night,” Casey muttered a few weeks later, bitter over his arrest and the subsequent crack-down his father had instated via police requirement. “Was messy and ugly. Didn’t think I’d ever see so many cop cars in my life.”

“…and your dad?” asked Brendon tentatively.

Casey shrugged. They lay across his bed, the comforter a worn blue and the pillowcases mismatched, yet both with a soccer emblem on their surface. “He’s still an asshole, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“How long is he enforcing house arrest?” Continue reading →

CANVAS BLUES
Vignettes Regarding the Artwork of Brendon Kotes

LVI: Present

An audience made work difficult. Brendon’s attention wavered, his hands lost steadiness, his mental vision turning muddied rather than crisp and clear. The fact that Orion looked incredibly content to sweep inexpert strokes across the small, cheap canvas Brendon had given him and did not bother casting glances sideways didn’t seem to matter.

They painted under a hot summer breeze and clouds the size and breadth of fingernails. A crescent frowned at them as it lowered in the west and found its way onto Brendon’s painting in multiples, the moon mirrored throughout the sky as if taunting the sun. He added impossible reflections to the water, a broken-edged crisscross of sunlight and moonlight. The wharf under his feet morphed into a mazed set of gnarled roots, like mangroves inching into the bay.

None of it made sense, yet he was careful to keep a place where human feet could stand stably. Conscious to thwart reality by picking a navy—so close to Orion’s shirt—to add shade. He found himself rippling the water more than normal that it might not be mistaken for glass, and then banking them so the wind would not be typhoon-strong.

Through Orion kept his promise, his questions about paint rather than stranger things, Brendon could feel eyes looking over his shoulder, judging the safety of his art. Asking, silently, whether he might claim a victim from this creation.

It was midday and sweat soaked his shirt when Orion finally spoke. “You work through lunch?” Continue reading →