Page 58 of A Thousand Painted Hours

I crossed the room. “Well done.”

In surprise, she looked up. “Thank you.” She was a slight, pale girl with nondescript brown hair. Unremarkable in every way but the way she put light on the canvas.

“I’m struggling,” I confessed. “I’ve wanted to attend art school since I was a small child. Not that I’m doing particularly well.”

She glanced over to my easel, dabbed a whisper of white over the table. “You haven’t found your voice yet. You will.”

It stung, like Tanveer’s words, like the professor telling me the things I painted were no longer in vogue. I watched her for a while, layering light into the scene in the tiniest drops. “I see that you’ve found your voice. I can tell a painting is yours before I see your name.”

“Thank you,” she said with sincerity. “I can recognize yours, as well, but it is because of subject matter. No one else is painting so many Indian characters.”

I sighed. “I know. But that is what I loved painting as a child. That was what was around me! I still think they’re beautiful.”

“Objectively,” she said, leaning in to use a fingernail to remove a millimeter of white from the edge of the vase, “they are beautiful. They’re not yet very authentic is the thing.”

Authentic. A word Tanveer had also used. I sank down on the stool nearby her easel. “What does that even mean? How can I paint what isnotauthentically mine? How did you find out what was yours to say?”

She paused, wiping her brush clean, obviously considering. “I’ve painted and drawn flowers for as long as I can remember. My grandmother raised me, and her greatest joy was in the garden.” She dropped her brush into a waiting jar. “When she died, I was a bit lost. I started painting her things. The gloves.” She pointed at a sketch pinned to the wall, showing a hat on a chair. “Her hat. I think I like that feeling of thinking someone is about to be right back.”

A little sting burned the corners of my eyes. “I see that in your work.” I thought of some of her other paintings, the light, the colors in subdued hues, all very influenced by an English cottage garden. “Huh.”

“You are very talented. No one is hard on you because they want to make it hard. They want you to prove you mean it.”

I ducked my head. “Thank you.” I stood. “You had no reason to be kind to me, but I appreciate it.”

She only nodded.

I headed back to the easel and saw that I still loathed the painting it held. But whatdidI love? What did I love to paint? How would my voice assert itself on the canvas?

Our paintings were stored in vertical racks against the wall. I marched over to my section. Most were not particularly large, and I propped them up on a waist-high counter, then stood back to look at them side by side.

The first thing I could see was color. Bright, clear, saturated colors, sometimes even straining credulity. Red and gold, bright cerulean blue, hard desert browns, bright mountain greens. Saris and fruit and jewels. My preference for vivid colors had come under fire, but other painters used them, or had, and I liked them very much—the Matisse paintings I’d admired at the Post-Impressionist exhibit I’d attended with Florence Mallard; Gauguin and the domestic interiors of Bonnard.

What else? With the voice of Tanveer ringing in my ear, I could see the subject matter was a bit stylized, abitfairy tale, even if there was truth in them, the truth of things I really had seen with my own eyes—the tea wallah and the women selling aubergines.

Two paintings were slightly different. Drawn from the same memories, but not the same subjects. The first was the night sky over the palace in the desert, the night we had discussed whether other planets might have many suns. In the foreground was the party, spilling in light and color into the corner of the painting, while most of the canvas was covered with the sky and stars. So many, many stars. Two figures stood with heads uptilted, their bodies in silhouette against the night. It felt true.

The other was of Gurdaya as a child, hair down, cross-legged against the backdrop of the pond where we’d learned to swim. She held a book in her hand and gazed out over the water with a speculative frown. I’d painted it when I found out she’d had to marry against her will. Of course I could not send it to her, but it had transmuted my fury to something more peaceful.

As I stood there, looking and looking, Rocky came into the room. We often ate dinner together and talked over the struggles of the day. “What have we here?” he asked, wiping his hands with the cloth that ever hung from his belt.

“I am grappling with what I should be painting. What’s mine and what’s some awful legacy.”

“Ah, the Orientalism.” He nodded, pushing heavy honey-colored hair off his beautiful face. His fingers left streaks of dust on his forehead. “And what do you see?”

I sighed. “I’m afraid thereisa bit of imitation going on here, in the marketplace, the portraits. I thought it was real, but maybe it isn’t.”

“Hmm. What else?”

“The colors are bright and saturated, which I know is not the fashion, but it speaks to me in ways all these muted tones do not.” I shook my head. “I don’t even know why that appeals to anyone.”

“Your palette developed in a sunnier, more colorful place.”

“So is that authentic or colonialist?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

Pressure built on my chest. “I don’t know!”