Fiction | November 08, 2019

Galleries know there is a certain type of painting that sells, and every gallery has one or two artists whose work isn’t exciting or edgy but are kept on because it is nice to know there will be enough income to pay the water bill every month. The average buyer doesn’t want five mason jars glued to a steel beam containing all the artist’s body hair collected over the span of four years. Most want something to hang over their new Italian couch or in blank space in the foyer by the stairs. Claire made these paintings. Still lifes mostly, acrylic or oil, heavy brush strokes and bright colors with an expert play of shadow and light. They had enough artistic flourish to give the proper amount of expressionist feeling, but not so much that despair might leak from the canvas into the comfortable rooms of a buyer’s brownstone.