I didn’t agree, and shrugged. We got to work on our projects. Mr. Lee was still at it with the other clowns, so I tuned them out and focused on recreating the painting in oil pastels.
Mr. Lee came by after a while to observe, moving from table to table. “Josephine, I love what you’re doing with those small bits of paper. You’re really capturing the movement of the Pollock.” Looking at mine, he said, “Rachel, I am absolutely in love with the fact that you know Artimesia Gentileschi. And I love that painting myself. But I wonder if you’d reconsider your choice of oil pastels. I’d like to see a completely different take on the work, perhaps sculpture or even watercolour. The painting is so dark as it is, and a lighter, softer perspective could be more interesting. Think about it.” He moved on to the next table.
But that was exactly why I had chosen the pastels. The colours were dark and bold. Mr. Lee didn’t understand that I was going to make my version of the painting even darker than it already was. If all Josephine could see was a guy getting killed, if that’s all everyone else saw when they looked at this painting, I wanted them to see the rage and passion and intensity.
I copied the scene, but I twisted Holofernes’s expression, highlighting his agony and confusion. The blood spilled from his jugular onto the bed, as in the painting, but I took it further, pooling it on the floor. I emphasized the wound on his neck, giving it dimension, hinting at the rupturing, severing veins. Judith’s maidservant pinned him to the bed, her face a mixture of determination and amusement, her muscles tensing, her fingers digging into his sweating skin. And Judith, so focused, but also with a hint of a smile on her face. Brandishing the blade fiercely. I added blood to her hands, almost feeling its warmth as it flowed from the cut. I imagined she would relish the feeling of that blood enveloping her fingers. I decided to add some blood to the maidservant’s hands as well, picturing that they would both get satisfaction from feeling their enemy’s life drain away over their skin.
The background, which in the painting implied a candlelit, shadowy bedchamber, I got creative with. I added in some words from a poem I had written, garishly like the metal band fonts I could barely decipher. I made them crackle like spiderwebs, scrawled across the wall. He will die and we will laugh. You, my love, my other half.
My fingers were covered with oil pastel for three days, even after I washed them. The shadows of it would remain there, but I was so excited for art class those days, I felt like I was buzzing just thinking about it. I barely even noticed Josephine beside me as she snipped out her pieces of paper. What the hell did a stupid Jackson Pollock painting have to do with anything? God love her, but she didn’t understand passion and feeling either.
When I was finished, I was so proud. I’d worked hard. It had taken me three classes, while some of the morons were only getting started. Too bad for them that they weren’t inspired by anything. Too bad for them that they didn’t believe in anything, couldn’t express anything.
I sat back in my chair and gazed down on my completed Judith replica. It was dark, it was passionate, it flowed with hate and accomplishment and beauty. And the words on the wall behind them felt like my own little secret.
“Holy shit,” Josephine said. “That’s really . . . really fucking scary, Rachel. It’s gory as hell.”
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“It reminds me of you.” She grinned.
Mr. Lee noticed that we were talking and wandered back through the class. “Are you finished with yours, Rachel?”
“I am.”
“I can’t wait to see your interpretation of my favourite Gentileschi painting,” he said, smiling as he arrived at our table.
He gazed down at the pastel drawing and was silent. “Are those words on the wall behind the scene?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say?”