This one gets a bit rough, so bail now if that's not your thing.
Inspired by Lucian Freud's painting Portrait of Rose, and of course by Rebecca, whom I shall miss terribly on here but sometimes decisions are imposed. Hopefully we'll hook up elsewhere.
You might want to play the 6 minute version of Heroes loud in your ears at the same time as he does.
Portrait of Rebecca
"It's very...explicit isn't it, Dad?"
She peered closer at his latest work, a large canvas with muted palette - browns, dark greens, mauves. The woman was on a psychiatrist's couch, naked except for a white silk wrap at her feet, a draped arm reaching for a strawberry from a bowl. Her legs were parted and her pudenda clearly aroused, either pre or post some kind of sexual activity. Her face was somewhat tortured - guilt perhaps? Her breasts held firm despite the state of repose, nipples proud and deep pink.
It was still not touch-dry in places. Having worked on it for the three weeks prior to her 21st birthday he felt it was ready, even though every time he looked he found a hundred new problems.
His success as a painter had come late. He was selling now. Not for millions like his inspirations Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, but enough to keep him in supplies, and pay for his studio in SW London.
Enough to splash out on the mid-thigh champagne satin dress she now wore with, he suspected, nothing underneath; dressed for the expensive restaurant he had booked.
As she bent to study a detail she felt his eyes on him, shifted a little and peered ever closer.
She stood and turned quickly, caught him ogling, scoffed, reddened.
"Oh I got you something as well. I picked it up in a second hand shop in Berlin."
She went to her bag and retrieved a rare12" vinyl version of David Bowie's 'Heroes' c/w 'v-2 schneider'. He was moved, and awkward in his gratitude, offering a tense hug.
Placing it on his turntable - one of the few luxuries he allowed himself was an exquisite top of the range sound system - it crackled into life. His favourite Bowie certainly.
She sensed his unease at the emotion he'd felt, and turned again to the painting.
"I love it Dad, you've really captured me. To be able to do that from memory and imagination is just so powerful."
"I wanted to surprise you, couldn't ask you to model."
The room smelt of oil paints and various mixing solutions - linseed, walnut. Abandoned projects strewn haphazardly, old brushes in jars, worn down pastels, charcoals. Like most studios it was a mess. Gradually, over the years, spills and marks had been left unattended, until the entire floor and walls looked like some kind of Jackson Pollock practice piece.
She nodded towards his previous work on the floor, unsold because he had withdrawn it, disgusted with its lack of honesty, its commercial pretensions.
"You lost your way a bit for a while didn't you?"
She was right. His inspiration had dried up, he was coasting. He had an audience and knew what they wanted, but with this new piece he had located something painful, almost visceral.
"She just looks so....human. Damaged."
He had moved closer behind her. She indicated parts of the face.
"The pain here. The deep uncertainty. The longing in those eyes. My eyes."
His life had been hard as a struggling artist, selling worthless tat here and there, portraits for vain mothers, never prepared to give up on his dream. Was it worth it? Yes, because now he could claim to be a man who got what he wanted.
And right now, he wanted her.
He reached down and took her bottom in his hands through the soft satin, smoothing the material down, then rucking it up again, each time exposing more thigh.
