The Painted Town, Part 1.

When my brother and I returned home after our final day of school for the year, it was late May and we were both cheered being home after another long year at the Flore Educational School. My brother would be a 6th grader now and I would be moving on to 11th grade. When we got home our mother had a cake waiting for us, it was a cookie cake, just the way we liked it. When we asked what the occasion was she simply stated that she was proud of us for exceeding her expectations for this past year; both of us put in a lot of time studying and completing various projects before there due dates. I'd be moving to college within a few years and it was even assumed that--due to following in my footsteps--that he would even achieve more than I did when competing in the Science Bowl. That was a big event, don't misunderstand, a lot of kids base their entire years on that project. Some even receive offers from prestigious universities and well-established businesses because of their research and work-ethic. This year I worked on a topic that I had been thinking about for a long time, I had gotten into the arts years ago, mostly just doodling on my notepad and sketchbook. I bought myself a few books with my allowance and even managed to squeeze in an art class or two along the way. I loved to draw, and I especially loved drawing people.

There was something gritty to seeing people in their everyday work life, jotting down their movements and basing those off of their emotions. My father would always tell me that you could sense a persons character based off of their body language. There were very few people capable of hiding their true emotions, most people weren't clever or self-absorbed in that matter, most just lived their lives and thought nothing of what others thought of them. I kept this going for a year before I eventually ran out of space in my sketchbook. I had spent most of my allowance on candies and drinks after graduation, trying to party as hard as I could for what you would consider a coddled, nerdy young man. While art wasn't my main influence in life, it was rapidly taking over my daily life and my interests started to form around it. I was a little bummed for a few days, even playing games with my brother didn't help. I looked through my art books I couldn't really find anything to learn, but that was the ironic thing about all my textbooks: they were studies on techniques and practices. How could I practice if I had no paper or proper pencils to use?

I surfed through my mother's bookshelves to hopefully find something to alleviate my pain; it took a moment or two, and I almost gave up entirely until I saw a small orange book with bold font title consisting of the word "Art". I took it from the shelf and carefully swept off the thin layer of dust covering the top and bottom, from there I read the title aloud, "Art: To the Point of No Return". From the title alone I could tell that I wouldn't find the normal, excellent outlook on art that I found on previous titles I currently owned. The pages were thick and dense, but luckily the book wasn't but a little bit over a hundred pages long, I took it to my room and immediately cracked it open. Within a day I read every page.

Normally I could read books much quicker, even longer books, but I had to put a lot of effort into studying every page and for some reason the author's name was crossed out on the front cover and everywhere else. A few pages were dedicated entirely to a work of art, most of these images had been faded due to time but I could still see the vibrant colors that had been painted depicting flowers, a single house with a red roof, a cyclist in the midst of an empty street, a tidal wave of cool blue colors. Seeing these illustrations, I expected there to be some sort of description of each piece, but never found one. Instead the writing resembled more of a journal than a critical assessment of art; there were no chapters or parts, just a breaking of words through paragraphs of thought. However, I could still understand what the author wrote, they had this deeper belief in art that it could change the world for good or worse. Neglecting history and culture in art would be the same as disregarding common arithmetic when dealing with calculus. The way they saw the world was through the negatives that society had clung to for the past few decades. The development of the tv, which led to video games, computers, and eventually phones had crippled modern-day artists from ascending to legendary statuses, like the many masters who came before their generations.

Those names seemed to just be dust in the wind now, called upon every now and then by a few curious academics who truly wish to learn and expand their craft and skills. Art had become a joke to society, it no longer seemed to be a refined craft as it did, now it was subjected to thoughtless businessmen who wished to make a quick thousand dollars by tearing a toilet off of its pipes and showcasing it to the world. The author went on to explain that while they wished to slap some sense into the "money-minded folk", they also couldn't help but applaud their efforts. Dollar seekers mainly wish to extract every slip of paper from the audience that gathers to see what they have to offer and unfortunately the problem doesn't lie within the producers but those who consume their product.

"The soul of this world has faded long ago, and only a husk remains."

The rest of the book continued selling the same talking points; I was compelled to feel a slight tinge of sadness for the author. I pondered over the book for a few days until my mother came home with a new idea for a vacation. She'd won some tickets at her office and she'd chosen to get three for her and her kids, it would only be another week but we'd be packing for a four day trip. Tuswhelle was our location, a place in the middle of Europe that supposedly was built as a small tourist attraction, after a quick google search I found out that this place was famously known as "The Painted Town".

I asked my brother for some of his allowance, to which he promised to trade as long as I gave him some of my candy. Seemed like a fair trade to me, I took that money and bought myself a new sketchpad and a couple of graphite pencils to go with it. I made the purpose of this trip to learn as much as I could about myself and the art that I was drawn to. Whoever wrote that book, I promised I wouldn't let them down.