None of this registers immediately, however, including the sharp pain in my baby toe, which takes the brunt of the hit. All I can focus on is the painting and what’s missing.
While conservators focus on areas of loss, replacing missing elements, one needs to avoid altering the artist’s work. Sometimes you add to the painting, your own brushstrokes becoming part of the story—ideally done in a skillful way to match the artist’s style, allowing the original vision to remain intact. A conservator’s goal is replicating with precise detail; to be an invisible partner to the artist.
So you spend as much time looking at what is there as searching for what isn’t. However, usually what’s missing is only a tiny fragment of the story. Something discrete—a corner of a pillow on a settee, ormaybe the edge of a flower petal. Perhaps a sliver of chin, the missing top of a pointer finger, the heel of a shoe. Most of the time you have enough to work with and can visualize the story the artist was telling in the composition. You see the path through the conservation.
Now, as I stand in my studio, drenched slippers and throbbing toe, I stare at the painting and wonder, for the second time in as many days, if I’m losing my mind. For real this time.
I press my fingers against closed eyelids, count to five, then blink a few times to clear my vision. Cold vines of dread spread through me, and I’m dimly aware of my watch’s incessant vibrations.
I can’t explain it. Nothing about this makes any sense. The painting is…blank.
I’m half-done with the surface cleaning—managed to clear the soot to a good three inches above the belly button during my last session. There, I’ve uncovered something that looks like the base of a triangle, sitting below the subject’s rib cage. The shape is heavily streaked with fine black lines, the paint thickly applied to create an intricate crosshatch pattern. For now it’s unclear what the shape represents, but excited by the discovery, I took dozens of photographs of the finding.
But now the newly uncovered crosshatched section is gone. So is the entire bottom half of the painting I’ve already cleaned. The navel, where I found the fingernail fragment, is nowhere to be seen. All that’s left behind is the black background.
Either someone got in here and covered the canvas with black paint, or the subject simply disappeared from the painting. I know the first didn’t happen—I’ve been the only one in the studio. Which leaves the impossible as the stronger option.
Am I breathing? Barely. Am I dizzy? Yes. Do I understand what I’m seeing?Fuck, no.
I take a couple of steps backward and press my body against the closed studio door, my breath releasing in a wheeze. I frantically glance around the room, looking for what, exactly, I don’t know.
Take a photograph.
This thought breaks through my confused panic.Yes, a photo!Maybe the light is doing something odd. Maybe the stress of what happened yesterday has caused a brief lapse from reality. Maybe I’m dehydrated, delirious, again?
I turn to get my camera from the desk, fingers shaking. I keep my movements slow and deliberate, as though trying to cue my nervous system to relax. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to scare the missing subject, if she’s (somehow, somewhere) in the room with me.
I freeze, my quivering fingertips mere inches from the camera. I’m paralyzed with fear because now I have the sense I’m being watched. As though thinking about the subject somehow invoked her.
The hairs on my arms rise.
Trying to calm myself, I take stock of my surroundings. Nothing out of the ordinary.Feelings aren’t facts…Feelings are not facts…
It’s a sunny day. Light streams through the window, creating dancing patterns on the floor. Everything is as it should be. Those are the facts. (Yet, so is the truth that the canvas is blank.)
“Look up.”
The voice is urgent, and I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. Inside me? Outside me? I shake my head.No.
“LOOK UP!”More urgent now, the voice—female, possibly my own—echoing inside me.
“I don’t want to,” I whisper, shaking hard. The urge to tilt my head, to abide by the voice, is powerful, and despite my great desire not to do so, my chin begins to lift. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Ever so slowly my chin rises, the crown of my head tipping backward. I keep my eyes tightly closed until there’s painful pressure at the base of my skull, and I know when I open my eyes I’ll be staring straight up at the ceiling.
A scream waits at the back of my throat. My entire being tenses. I wish I had my scalpel, I think, my fingers clenching around empty air.
I open my eyes.
There’s nothing but white paint and pot lights in the ceiling above.
The relief is so extreme I start to laugh, head still tilted back, until tears stream out of my eyes. Finally, getting a hold of myself, I look over at the canvas.
The last remnant of my relieved chuckle is lost in my throat. I blink rapidly, my vision tear streaked. Three rapid steps forward and I’m standing directly over the painting. I put my face so close to it, I am nose to canvas. Then I pull back, following the recently uncovered crosshatched section. Gloveless, I air-trace the lines with my finger, following the circle of her navel next.
She’s back.
—
