Art Critic

Acerbic in her praise of the fruits of your labors that flowed like rivers  of blood from your fingers, she spoke of the promise of your efforts, the potential in your art, as if promise and potential were words of praise, rather than knives dipped in poison, their blades twisted in the tender underbelly of the soft spot where your dignity resides. She waxed on about the art buried, somewhere, in your brain and in your muscles, clamoring to be released. She spoke of working to unleash your inner artist, as she viewed the sculpture you had created from solid rock, the stone uncovered with your chisel all that remained of your soul, bare and bleeding and clinging to life by threads as thin as strands of  hair, while her hands twitched as if she were a stylist dreaming of using a barber’s shears. She treated your canvases like a commodity, a sack of grain or a tank car of fuel, rather than imperfect jewels crafted of breath and blood, love and loathing, wishes and fear. The woman, entrusted with your dreams and your future, had neither painted nor sculpted anything more creative than a stick figure and a mud pie. The wounds healed but the scars and the pain remain like beacons, absorbing harshness, drinking in imperfection. Cold in her professional assessment, she dashed your dreams of life as an artist, turning you, instead, into a critic who can find nothing to criticize in anyone’s art.