An Artist's Gothic Tale

An Artist’s Gothic Tale

The artist stood on the high bank, gazing out across the bay breathing deeply in the crisp sea air flavoured faintly with the comforting taste of fish and chips. The iconic whale bones stood arched before her, framing the crumbling abbey arising a melancholy spectre of gothic decrepitude from the jutting promontory.

She had often visited this place. The architecture, landscape, sea, tourists and resident ‘goths’ were recurring themes in what most critics described as her ‘quirky’ paintings. The location provided a sense of ageless grace and piety juxtaposed against the trite superficiality of a traditional British seaside town. It was a perfect medium of contradiction, a sense often prevalent in her work.

The wind whipped her hair about her face and forced her to clutch her canvas frantically as the gust threatened to carry her away with it like a parachute sailing over the crashing of the incoming tide. She fumbled with her bag, hair and clothing until she finally regained control of her person and began her descent through the arch. Considering how often she had found herself here, she might have been better organised. Walking along the quay populated with clanging penny arcades, inviting sweet shops and restaurants filling the air with the tempting aroma of salty deep fried seafood, she allowed her mind to wander.

The sunset painted the sky pink, red, and violet with the orange and yellow sun lending its artistry to give the clouds along the horizon an unearthly hue, reminiscent of the wild emotional colours preferred by the great fauvist painters. The colours shone through the broken windows of the abbey where once colours may have been artfully arranged in biblical scenes depicted in the stained glass of centuries past.

Approaching the end of the climb, the abbey loomed in the twilight, a lonely dragon of stone and moss sighing darkly in the sea breeze, dreaming of the grand moments of its youth, the power of its adulthood, the wisdom of its middle age to the slumbering of its senility.

She climbed the last few steps and made her way across the grass, dewy from the sea frets which had shrouded the place until that evening, making way for the fiery sunset that now seemed to burn around the edges of the edifice. The artist slung her folding chair down from her shoulder, stuck her easel into the ground and attached her canvas to it, much to the disappointment of the roguish wind. By the time her preparations were complete, the sun was a massive orange orb slashed through in half by the horizon as it sank into the sea. With the abbey directly before her, it seemed to disintegrate in the last throes of the dying light. A full moon had also appeared, the light of which would guide her muse tonight.

The edifice always showed a new element of its character each time she sat down to paint it. Peering into the abbey, for a moment there appeared the shape of a man walking prayerfully from shadow to shadow between the gaping windows. Clad in black, only the masculine shadow and the shape of a tri-corner hat perched atop the figure’s head were visible in the gloom. The artist looked down to grab a brush. When she looked back at the abbey the figure had disappeared. Shaking her head, she blamed her vision on a trick of the twilight.

The artist looked back to the abbey and took in the silent macabre of its presence against the deepening blue of the early night sky. The occasional pin prick of light began to appear in the sky, fighting through the darkening illumination of the sun sinking deeper into the sea. She found her inspiration and began to paint a wild deep blue sky burning lighter down the canvas, encompassing both the sunset from earlier and the darkness to come. She began to depict the abbey as a dark hulk against the swirling colour of the sky.

“It is beautiful,” a soft whispered voice breathed from somewhere close behind her. The small hairs on her back stood on end. She could almost feel the warmth of a man’s breath on her neck. She jumped, nearly tipping herself and her canvas to the ground. Gathering her wits despite her terror, the artist turned to look behind her. At the top of the stairs stood the figure seen earlier silhouetted against the windows of the abbey. Facing her, the figure seemed to glow in the blue light of the full moon, shining full on his pale face, shimmering in the semi darkness against the fullness of the deepening night behind him.

“Thank you,” she uttered barely above a whisper, unsure if his comment was for her work or for the grand vista before them. Frozen in time, the moment seemed too sacrosanct for more than a quiet word to break the isolation.

The figure nodded, smiling slightly. He turned and began to descend the stair.

She sat there a moment, wondering what had just happened. Then walking to the top of the stair, she looked down to observe the descent of the strange figure. He was nowhere to be seen.

The artist went back to her painting and frowned. She had intended to leave humanity entirely out of this painting, focussing only on the scene – the melancholy – the age and the timelessness. But there among the stones of the church yard, in the glow of the window which she had painted against the colour of the sky only minutes ago, was the clear silhouette of the tri-corner hat with a ghostly white face peering back at her from the canvas.