Brighter than a Technicolor Dream

Welcome to the launch jubilee for my surreal short story, MIXED MEDIA! This is the first in a series of posts to celebrate publication, and no celebration is complete without a door prize! Click the Rafflecoptor button to enter for a chance to win a $25 (USD) gift certificate redeemable at Art.com!

Mari Biella, my friend and author of THE QUICKENING and LOVING IMOGEN,continues the launch festivities on her blog. In my guest post, I discuss the inspiration for MIXED MEDIA.

Story Blurb

Mario Santa Maria is an artist who has lost his dreams – literally. Insomnia, unemployment, and a failing relationship are his lot. Things are going badly, and then things get strange. On a visit to the Vos Modern Art Museum, Mario discovers he has the ability to intercept the communication between art and a viewer. MIXED MEDIA is a surreal tale of masterpieces, Delphic sugar cubes, and the promise of new perspectives.

What’s hidden by what we see?

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Welcome to Vos Modern

Excerpt from MIXED MEDIA:

In this passage, Mario discovers that he can no longer see any art in the gallery when he is by himself. He has just emerged from the Visiting Exhibit, stunned by the nihilism of a display consisting of several canvases apparently painted black.

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The Contemporary Art exhibit was in the next room; it was well-lit, and the floor creaked with familiar goodwill. Color exploded from the canvases, brighter than a Technicolor dream. O’Keefe’s southwest yellow-orange-red swelled near Rothko’s angular green-blue-brown. It was all as I remembered it, as colorful and mind-expanding as I remembered — and then it wasn’t. The encroaching black slid over the Contemporary masterpieces. The yellow-hued Ashley to my left went blank. There was no yellow on the canvas. No yellow, no red, no green-blue-brown, not even a pastel. Just black.

 

Blue, Green, and Brown by Mark Rothko via Art.com

Mellow Yellow II by Erin Ashley, via Art.com

Red Amaryllis, by Georgia O’Keefe via Art.com

Author Commentary:

The Vos Modern Art Museum isn’t a real venue. This allowed me to  gather the pieces that spoke most deeply to my story under one (imaginary) roof. I chose the Rothko because there is something about the shading in the blue that leads me to imagine distant pine trees shrouded by a midwinter night. The brown and green beneath promise Earthy rebirth, and this symbolizes Mario Santa Maria’s situation. Mellow Yellow II invokes thoughts of ripe wheat fields, and the idea of harvest. This, too, represents Mario, specifically his quest to understand the purpose hidden in his strange new ability, which first manifests just after the passage included in this post. O’Keefe’s flower conveys a sensual richness that represents the flowering of Mario’s understanding.

 Read MIXED MEDIA for free here:

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The images included in this post are courtesy of Art.com, where you can purchase prints of these works, and thousands of others.

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