I stretch my hands until my fingers pop and my wrists complain. The left one always does. Years of pushing charcoal, pulling brushes, and lifting canvas frames up stairs you can’t afford to avoid does that to you. I press the joint with my thumb until it warms and stops whining.
I open the notes app and scroll to the list I keep for press. It’s short and contains talking points so I don’t give interviews more of myself than they bought. No trauma details. No identifying information. Redirect if asked to “speak onbehalf of survivors.” Emphasize consent and process. Name the organizations I link to for resources, because people will ask where to donate and it shouldn’t be to me.
The back of my neck prickles. I turn and check the door again. It’s still locked. The habit isn’t paranoia; it’s maintenance. People think safety means nothing happens. Safety, in my experience, means you have a plan for when something does. I pick up my walk-up keychain from the hook by the kettle and click the keys together, just to hear the sound.
My laptop chimes, a new email arriving. Karael again. Fast reply.
Dear Ms. Hale,
Thank you for your clarity. Your conditions align with our program’s framework and practice. Let’s hold 10:30 a.m. tomorrow for an initial call. I’ll send a calendar invite. I also want to note that our Board Chair’s office has reached out to press regarding a slate of artists we’re supporting this quarter. We can ensure your project is mentioned only if/when you approve language, and we will not proceed without your explicit consent.
Best,
Jessa
Board Chair. That’s a different level of attention than a program officer sending a routine “we’re interested.” Foundation heads are the kind of people who sit in photos with giant checks. My gut does a half-turn. This could be good. It could also be exactly where control gets traded away in pretty envelopes.
I draft a quick confirmation, then add one more line before I send it:For any press mention, please route language through my gallery.I CC Zoe.
Her response pings before I set the phone down:I’m on it. You did the right thing. This is moving fast, but it’s moving in our direction.
She follows with a second message:Also, Ledger wants to bring a videographer into the studio for b-roll. Yes? We can say no.
I look around. The studio is clean enough and messy enough. Finished pieces face the wall, edges taped. Works-in-progress are unframed and unsentimental. The interviews live on a hard drive with a password long enough to make me feel safe. I think about someone filming me while I work and feel a drag in my stomach.
“Let’s do it at the gallery instead,” I text back. “I don’t want cameras in the studio. I think better when there’s no lens.”
She replies with a single check mark. I take it as a yes.
My phone goes face down on the table. I rinse a brush and the water turns gray. I make a new mix for the base of the neck—more yellow in the undertone, less red. The light slid a degree while I read emails. The shadow under the jaw needs to be softer now. I move with it. That’s the thing about painting from life or from lived sound: it doesn’t hold still just because you do.
While the paint tacks up, I cross to the back wall where canvases lean in a row. Each is tagged with a small strip of tape that reads initials and a number linking to a file in my system: interview date, consent status, revisions requested. I stop at W-07, a forty-by-fifty of a college student who asked me to make her look the way she feels when she runs at dusk. The face is turned three-quarters, hair pulled back, eyes set on something private. I wrote her last night to say the first pass was done. Her reply came at two a.m.:I want to see it. I think I’m ready.I emailed the jpeg but no answer yet. That’s fine. She’s on her schedule.
The kettle clicks. I pour hot water over fresh grounds in the old French press that doesn’t fit properly in its metal sleeve anymore. The bloom is rich and bitter. It cuts through the turpentine smell without fighting it. I set the timer on the stove. Four minutes.
The timer is a metronome for other work. I pick up the printed consents from a tray and check the edges are sealed where they should be. I flip through a clean stack of release forms and count ten. More tonight at the gallery. The little clerk part of my brain is as important as the part that knows where to place a shadow. People think artists float. The ones who last are the ones who file.
The timer chirps. I press down the plunger and pour into a mug that says PLEASE DO NOT DO IT FOR THE EXPOSURE. A friend gave it to me. She meant it as a joke and a warning. I take a sip and carry the mug back to the easel and set it on the cart where it will collect a new ring.
The phone buzzes again. For a second I consider ignoring it. I roll my eyes and pick it up to see a calendar invite from Karael: 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, Zoom, link included. I accept. A second buzzer sounds from my bank, alerting me to a deposit made from the gallery—half the advance for a pre-sold piece. Numbers are boring until they keep your rent paid and your lights on. I let the relief roll through my shoulders without apology.
Another message from my curator arrives:Another small thing. The museum asked if you’d consider letting them tag the project as “in partnership with Karael” if the grant lands. It’s standard. We can negotiate placement and scale.
This is how it happens. One phrase on a wall card, and the story shifts from “artist does work” to “artist and institution do work.” Words matter. Placement matters. Who owns the “with” matters.
“Not on the wall card,” I reply. “Program materials and website okay. The work stands under my name. Partners can stand beside it.”
Three dots appear on my screen. Then her text follows shortly:Agreed. I’ll negotiate it that way.
I set the phone down again for real. The quiet settles on the studio. I take the brush and soften the shadow under the jaw. The paint glides. The world stops trying to climb into the room. The nurse on the tape tells me about the first day she ran five minutes longer than she thought she could. “I thought I’d cry,” she says. “Instead, I laughed. I know that sounds strange.”
“It doesn’t,” I say out loud, and the word lands in the studio with the weight of a simple truth..
By noon, the anchor portrait is eighty percent of what it wants to be. The rest will arrive if I don’t push. I put a pin in it and cover it with muslin to keep dust off the wet. I take three deep breaths, stretch my back against the doorframe until it pops, and walk the length of the studio to keep my legs honest. On the far wall, a whiteboard holds a grid of tasks. I check three boxes.
Lunch is a banana, almonds from a jar I forget to seal, and a piece of toast that absorbs more paint smell than butter. I eat standing up, which is a habit I pretend is efficiency and is probably just me not liking chairs while I’m in work mode. I rinse the plate and leave it in the drying rack in the deep utility sink that’s older than I am.
Back at the laptop, I open a document labeled PRESS NOTES—WITNESS and read the two paragraphs I leave for myself to make sure I don’t start saying new things just because someone points a microphone at me. It’s not to make me robotic. It’s to keep the mission stable. The notes are sharp and simple. I adjust one sentence: swap “give voice” to “make space.” Words turn to rules if you let them. Better to keep them accurate.
