The Interview

It was he that suggested that we meet at a pub. It was a little past one in the afternoon, on a cool November day that I walked in to The Old Pig's Quim to interview the artist named Richard Elston. I first met him three weeks ago, during the opening night of his first exhibition. He was an unknown painter, discovered by a friend of mine, a French woman by the name Capucine Vachean who was the owner of La Gallerie. Elston seemed like a quiet, modest man, originally from London, but from the brief conversation that he and I had that one evening, I could already see the torrents of talent that stirred beneath his black-clad, genteel British exterior. His work was truly fascinating. Like Turner a century before him, Elston had a fervent relationship with movement and colour, choosing to represent his subjects by the way that they affected the atmosphere around them, rather than by painstaking modern realism. One could get lost in the sea and the mix of colours that lay thick on his canvases - be drowned in the swirling masses that represented water and earth in a way that made the heart quicken and knees tremble. Reds melting into greens and yellows shimmering past to become royal blues. Elston's paintings went beyond aestheticism and dove right into the experience of the senses and memory.
      When I told the painter that I would love to write an essay about his work to be published in a quarterly journal, he hesitated for a moment. The crackling static of the phone filled the brief silence before he spoke his grateful assent and offered to meet me at a pub close to the place where he was staying. I liked to do meetings in coffee shops rather than pubs because I prefer the smell of roasting coffee over stale beer, but there was a certain romanticism that I enjoyed of meeting an artist in a bar on a Tuesday afternoon. When I arrived, the man was already there, at a table by the bar, sitting straight over a ragged sketchbook with a cup of tea by his side. He noticed me quickly and stood to shake my hand. His grip was firm but careful and he smiled brightly, one side of his mouth rising higher than the other.
      As we settled across from each other, I ordered a round of coffee and tea and began the interview as soon as the drinks arrived. I began with his background, asking him if he was always interested in painting. Yes, he told me. His earliest memories as a child was of him sitting on the wet earth, studying the colours of yellowing leaves on trees and then trying to recapture those colours with an unsteady hand on paper. Colour, he said, was always important to him, but he quickly glanced down and at himself and laughed, for the only colour I've seen him wear was black. Maybe it is the neutrality of black, he reasoned as much as with me as with himself. White is too oppressive, too intimidating, but black always seemed comfortable as much as it was blank.
      I continued by asking him about his education, his youth, the moment when he realized that he wanted to make painting his profession. I think I've always known, he said. I could see that he considered every question that I asked, slowly turning it around in his mind, speaking in essay-like answers. While he thought, his eyes moved from my face, to the table, to the things around us, occasionally resting on a blank spot on the floor. He punctuated certain words with a lift of the eyebrows or a slight smile. He seemed like a warm man, though slightly cautious. At some moments, when he did look me straight in the eye, his glance was intense, searching and aware. Capucine told me that he was a handsome man, but I did not see it until then. Perhaps not traditionally attractive, his strong nose and a steady gaze were striking.
      He and I talked for a good part of the afternoon, only realizing that the time was close to evening when the regular patrons of the pub started coming in. We both decided that it was time to leave and exited the pub. Dusk was falling quickly over the city and the streets smelled like wet asphalt. I asked him if he missed England.
      "I miss green," he said, smiling slightly, "the city leaves no opportunity for colour. But lately I have found that recreating scenes of nature from memory saturates them like the eye never can."
      I shook his hand, thanked him, and told him I would be in touch. As we walked away in different directions I started constructing the essay in my mind. Capucine was right, the man was talented and talent like his deserved to be loved.