Art To Action
Entry by: writerXZXHYJNHXL
5th October 2018
The artist’s pencil swept back and forth across the page, spidery lines appearing on the crisp sheet of paper. On the other side of her easel, the land stretched out across rolling hills, divided into neat squares with hedgerows and low walls. Dotted across the fields were flashes of bright stone where farm buildings and ramshackle old shepherds’ huts interrupted the hillside. She began with the easiest lines, working quickly to form the outline of the landscape.
-
As the walker stood beneath the shadow of the hill, he could feel the earth around him shifting to accommodate his presence. It was a low feeling, deep in his bones, whispering that the land had yet to settle. Here in the shadows, everything looked incomplete. The fields were devoid of life. The trees he could see from the corner of his eyes stretched as bare spindles over the land. The sky overhead was grey, and the grass at his feet washed of its colour as though the world had become an old sepia photograph. Ahead of him, an ill-defined path ran along the length of a low wall at the boundary of a field. He set his feet to it, and began to walk.
-
The artist scowled down at her sketch, and selected her eraser from the box at her feet. With small, gentle motions, she rubbed at the line of the wall until it disappeared, and blew away the curls of eraser left behind with a short, sharp puff of breath.
-
The dry stone wall began to disappear. Only from one end at first, tiny pebbles clattering to the floor and rolling away down the hill, then the larger stones began to sift away, all along the line of the wall. When the walker reached out to try to catch one of the stones, it crumbled to dust in his fingers and swirled away on a sudden breeze.
-
Perhaps a hedge instead, the artist thought, sucking on the softened end of her pencil, flakes of paint coming off against her tongue with a bitter tang. Something more organic amongst the rolling fields. She took her pencil from between her lips, laid the point flat against the paper, and began to ruche a line of bushes onto the page.
-
The walker stared. Along what had once been a wall, hedges erupted, spreading at speed from where he stood at one end of the vanished wall right along the edge of the field. They did not grow slowly up from their roots with their branches spreading out and tiny leaves unfurling in careful order. One moment, he had been staring at where the wall had been, and the next he found himself facing thick bushes standing as high as his chest. When he stretched his hand out to touch the leaves, he found them fresh and sticky with sap.
-
The artist paused with her pencil poised at the dip of the hill, and scanned her gaze along the curve in the landscape before her. Just a small change, a new lift to the earth. She drifted her pencil along a lilting line, pulling the slope of the hill up more sharply to drag the eye upwards.
-
The walker staggered. The ground beneath his feet shuddered, groaning and creaking like the bones of an old giant. Then the earth began to rise sharply, knocking him backwards off his feet. He found himself sliding down the hillside as it rose ahead of him, scraping his elbows and knees against tufts of jagged grass and thorned twigs stuck in the soil. His fingers scrabbled at the ground, snagged around the stump of a tree, and clung to it until the ground had ceased to shake. When he raised his head, he saw ahead of him the new slope, climbing steep into the sky.
-
The artist wet the tip of her paintbrush and began to sweep colour onto the page. Glimpses of sky became blue and grey and a gentle lilac. The grass washed through with sunlight-tinged green. Gentle dashes of a creamy white the colour of old bone coaxed the buildings from the hillside. The trees were picked out as sharp scratches of brown.
-
As he lay on the ground, catching his breath and slowing the rapid thud of his racing heart, the walker noticed a flicker through the blur of his partially closed eyes. There was a warmth suddenly suffusing his body, and he cracked open his eyes to find overheard the clouds had cleared away to reveal a summer sun, and with it the flush of colour returning to the land.
-
Her work complete, the artist set her paintbrush down and leant back, framing the painting against the hills beyond. While she had been working she thought she remembered making changes, but looking now at the painting was like holding up a mirror to the land. Hadn’t there been a wall somewhere that she had changed to a hedgerow? Squinting out at the hills, she could see nothing but hedges running among the fields. She had not thought that incline so steep before either, but looking at it now she wondered if she had imagined the change. Every detail of the land before her had been captured exactly on her canvas, each tree in its place, the fields all in line, even the grazing sheep seemed to be frozen as they had been painted.
There was only one small difference, she noticed, as she began to tidy away her materials. In the distance, the tiny figure of a moving man fled down the twisting path to the base of the hill.
-
As the walker stood beneath the shadow of the hill, he could feel the earth around him shifting to accommodate his presence. It was a low feeling, deep in his bones, whispering that the land had yet to settle. Here in the shadows, everything looked incomplete. The fields were devoid of life. The trees he could see from the corner of his eyes stretched as bare spindles over the land. The sky overhead was grey, and the grass at his feet washed of its colour as though the world had become an old sepia photograph. Ahead of him, an ill-defined path ran along the length of a low wall at the boundary of a field. He set his feet to it, and began to walk.
-
The artist scowled down at her sketch, and selected her eraser from the box at her feet. With small, gentle motions, she rubbed at the line of the wall until it disappeared, and blew away the curls of eraser left behind with a short, sharp puff of breath.
-
The dry stone wall began to disappear. Only from one end at first, tiny pebbles clattering to the floor and rolling away down the hill, then the larger stones began to sift away, all along the line of the wall. When the walker reached out to try to catch one of the stones, it crumbled to dust in his fingers and swirled away on a sudden breeze.
-
Perhaps a hedge instead, the artist thought, sucking on the softened end of her pencil, flakes of paint coming off against her tongue with a bitter tang. Something more organic amongst the rolling fields. She took her pencil from between her lips, laid the point flat against the paper, and began to ruche a line of bushes onto the page.
-
The walker stared. Along what had once been a wall, hedges erupted, spreading at speed from where he stood at one end of the vanished wall right along the edge of the field. They did not grow slowly up from their roots with their branches spreading out and tiny leaves unfurling in careful order. One moment, he had been staring at where the wall had been, and the next he found himself facing thick bushes standing as high as his chest. When he stretched his hand out to touch the leaves, he found them fresh and sticky with sap.
-
The artist paused with her pencil poised at the dip of the hill, and scanned her gaze along the curve in the landscape before her. Just a small change, a new lift to the earth. She drifted her pencil along a lilting line, pulling the slope of the hill up more sharply to drag the eye upwards.
-
The walker staggered. The ground beneath his feet shuddered, groaning and creaking like the bones of an old giant. Then the earth began to rise sharply, knocking him backwards off his feet. He found himself sliding down the hillside as it rose ahead of him, scraping his elbows and knees against tufts of jagged grass and thorned twigs stuck in the soil. His fingers scrabbled at the ground, snagged around the stump of a tree, and clung to it until the ground had ceased to shake. When he raised his head, he saw ahead of him the new slope, climbing steep into the sky.
-
The artist wet the tip of her paintbrush and began to sweep colour onto the page. Glimpses of sky became blue and grey and a gentle lilac. The grass washed through with sunlight-tinged green. Gentle dashes of a creamy white the colour of old bone coaxed the buildings from the hillside. The trees were picked out as sharp scratches of brown.
-
As he lay on the ground, catching his breath and slowing the rapid thud of his racing heart, the walker noticed a flicker through the blur of his partially closed eyes. There was a warmth suddenly suffusing his body, and he cracked open his eyes to find overheard the clouds had cleared away to reveal a summer sun, and with it the flush of colour returning to the land.
-
Her work complete, the artist set her paintbrush down and leant back, framing the painting against the hills beyond. While she had been working she thought she remembered making changes, but looking now at the painting was like holding up a mirror to the land. Hadn’t there been a wall somewhere that she had changed to a hedgerow? Squinting out at the hills, she could see nothing but hedges running among the fields. She had not thought that incline so steep before either, but looking at it now she wondered if she had imagined the change. Every detail of the land before her had been captured exactly on her canvas, each tree in its place, the fields all in line, even the grazing sheep seemed to be frozen as they had been painted.
There was only one small difference, she noticed, as she began to tidy away her materials. In the distance, the tiny figure of a moving man fled down the twisting path to the base of the hill.
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