The Sculptor & His Mum

Preamble:

An earlier story, "The Sculptor & His Sis" explored the tension arising when a mature brother used his sister as a model. This story explores the tension arising when a son used his mature mother as a model. The two stories share some overarching thematic threads, with significant detail differences. They are independent stories which can be read separately.

There is taut nudity, exhibitionism, voyeurism and taboo frisson tension in this story. Its raison d'être is to tease, and this, it does relentlessly. If you are looking for flailing, wailing and caterwauling sex, this is not for you.

Ethan, an artist and sculptor, lives alone in an idyllic cliffside cottage. University chum, Sebastian or Seb is visiting. Ethan wins a commission to produce artworks for a study on the female form. A celebration of mature femininity. He has difficulty sourcing a suitable and willing model. Ethan enlists the help of his mum, Emma. Seb observes the mum-son interactions. Is there more going on than art?

***

Chapter 1: Chums

Chapter 2: The Commission

Chapter 3: A Model Mum

Chapter 4: Webcam Audition

Chapter 5: Arrival

Chapter 6: Photoshoot

Chapter 7: Movie Night

Chapter 8: Draw

Chapter 9: Nocturne

Chapter 10: Sculpt

Chapter 11: Exhibition

Chapter 12: Suite Ending

Epilogue

***

Chapter 1: Chums

Seb is ten nautical miles from his destination. The course he has set is a cove in the south coast. He trims his sail as he skims the brilliant skin of sea, striding the deep. He is as intimately close to the wind as he can be. He stares down the eye of the wind. This moves him, and his 38-foot yacht. Here he is again, romanticising the laws of physics, as if they are negotiable.

The sky is a drifting canvas of sun and clouds. Of brilliant and filtered light.

Seb thinks of the Joni Mitchell song. A fave of Ethan and his. A folk anthem, not of his era though. But, it resonates with him like he had written and composed it himself right off his head, unbeknownst to Joni Mitchell, one morning in time. Some songs do that to you. Most songs sing by you, seeking its listener to fasten on.

Seb thinks of Ethan whom he will see again at landfall. Ten years have come to insert between them.

"Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all"

Such beautiful words! No words can describe these beautiful words. And that is Ethan on song. A cloud illusion as Seb recalls. He doesn't know Ethan at all.

Seb first met Ethan in university. Seb was pursuing a degree in Literature. He had a burning ambition to be a creative writer. Ethan was pursuing a degree in the Fine Arts. He nursed mild ambitions to be an artist and sculptor.

Aside from their being invested in the Humanities, they are a study of contrasts. Chalk and cheese.

Seb has short light brown hair. Dark eyes, bearing nuances of Mediterranean, mystified with hints of Levantine. He sports a little arrowtail of hair at his nape of neck. This is the only outward badge hint of his artistic bent. Seb is almost pretty in a decidedly masculine way. Medium shoulders. Nearly 6 feet tall. He bears the hallmarks of a competitive sailor, even though he is a recreational one. Bronzed toned arms and legs. He runs and workouts whenever he can, to compensate for the hours of physical inactivity as a writer.

Ethan is the antithesis of Seb. Five feet eight inches to Seb's six. He is not as trim as Seb. He can lose a few pounds. Where Seb is cryptically Levantine, Ethan is in-your-face Germanic. Blindingly blond. Ashen complexion bordering on anaemic. A corpse white. Arctic pale blue eyes from a blend of ocean and sky. No genetic code to decrypt here. Clear as morning birdsong at the first break of spring. Careless mop of longish hair bunching into an irreverent ponytail. Scruffy beard. He has a tattoo somewhere on his person, of ornate quality, which he can't remember precisely where. Ethan is not handsome in the socially classic sense, but appealing in a brooding insouciant way.

Ethan has the demeanor of modest aristocracy. People who live charmed lives and say awfully clever things, although Ethan doesn't really say that very much. Manners as opposed to etiquette. And confident, blasé, outrageous manners at that, which only the privileged get away with without having to get away with. Equanimity. Ethan is apt to believe he is God if he believes in God. Ethan offers an alternative subspecies mutation of the male beast from Seb's. Both are beasts with brains. Although Ethan embodies that extra masculine bit of devilish monstrosity in his mien. This profile appeals to women who are longing for something more, but don't know it.

Seb is the curious, effervescent, communicative humanist. He is in his element in a sea of words. He is convinced that Art follows Life.

Ethan is intense, ponderous, often brooding. He recasts the world on canvas and rock as only he sees it. He makes the whole annoyingly incomplete. He has the weakness, or maybe this is a strength for an artist, to portray life as larger than life. Art leads the way. Art challenges, mocks and revalues Life. Life necessarily follows Art. If not, why have Art? An arrogant dick who does not suffer art fools gladly. If he suffers them at all. An art fascist, if this well-meaning label doesn't demean fascism.

Being a creative animal, he is necessarily a romantic, but he is not particularly invested in romance.

Socioeconomically, Seb is new money minted upper middle class, still wondrously figuring out the possibilities of money. It affords him a platform to pursue creativity without the overhang of economic pressure. But, his craft has to deliver at some point to feed economic reality.

Ethan coasts along on an income stream legacy. A life annuity. Old money modest aristocracy. Annoyances like mortgages are not in his financial lexicon. He can follow his artistic impulses to his heart's highest calling without the inconvenient distraction of economic imperatives.

Seb is single. He has no desire to settle down in the foreseeable future. He spends time between verdant Hampstead Heath in outer London, and Penzance at the jackboot tip of Cornwall. He relishes the romance of sailing in its struggle against the laws of nature. He fashions himself as a kind of modern day ethical pirate of Penzance. He lives a writer's hermit life someplace in the far countryside whenever he is working on a novel. He has published with moderate success. At this time, he is in between novels, seeking inspiration for his elusive magnum opus. Maybe Ethan will be the fountainhead?

Psychologists are still unsure as to whether human beings think in words and sentences, or images and concepts. Seb lives by words and sentences. Ethan, images. Seb and Ethan are indeed chalk and cheese. But together, they got the world covered.

Ethan lives alone in a remote cliffside cottage, in his neck of the woods which cranes soaringly above a cove, in the south coast. A sort of wuthering heights staring down on a moor of sea. This is the cove that Seb is sailing to.

Ethan's cottage is in the quintessential classic English style. Its interior has the cosy cottage ambience, paneled with prematurely aged wood, but updated tastefully with modern amenities while retaining the rustic charm. The cottage comprises a living room, which spills out seamlessly to a patio, a garden extending all the way to the cliff edge, overlooking the sea. There is an open kitchenette, a dining area, three bedrooms, and a studio where Ethan does his drawing, sculpting and photoshoots. The nearest home from the cottage is a mile away. A world unto itself, which is Ethan's world of all possible worlds.

Ethan has a bevy of girlfriends, but remains single. They see in him a wild man with possibly a homemade bomb in his pocket, an irresistible heroism, although of what, they cannot define. His independent eccentric artistic streak is at odds with the institution of marriage. His solitude lifestyle does not appeal to his girlfriends. They are initially enamoured of the austere romance of the Emily Brontësque isolation, but after a week or two of quietude, and being sufficiently awed by the beauty of the environs, they ache for more animated stimulation.

Seb drops his sail. He motors gently into the cove. Chug, chug, chug. He moors his yacht at the ramshackle jetty. His yacht is in a static gallop. Will the jetty hold his yacht in a tempest, he wonders?

The sailor home from the sea.

A generously sunny day. Seb puts on his aviator sunshades. His spirit soars. This is a good day to be alive.

His eyes travel up the massive erection of cliff face. This he must mount.

He lugs his sausage of baggage up the dizzy winding hewn cliff path to Ethan's cottage. He feels invigorated. The air is so sharp, he can kiss it.

And there he is. Ethan. Perched precariously at the cliff edge overhang of his garden, staring down the far horizon, forehead wrinkled, eyes squinted sagely, hand gripping his paint brush with a vengeance, attacking his canvas with a practised quality.

***

Chapter 2: The Commission

Seb and Ethan reconnect over the week.

They were both nineteen when they first met in uni. They were best friends then at a time when those words meant something. They are now a ripe thirty-five.

They fall into an idyllic routine. Seb is in between novels. Ethan is in between work commissions. It is summer. Ethan doesn't say much. They have a cosmic connection that transcends perfunctory words. They occasionally talk about things past that are too memorable to remember, but these drift back to them now.

They eke out a bohemian existence that is mercifully spared of the romance of deprivation and hunger.

There is a system to their idyll. Everyday is a new eternity. Their time and place is theirs to plot.

They are both night people. They muse, philosophise, wine and weed deep into the night. On indulgent nights when they set themselves adrift, and are particularly buoyant and jolly, Ethan breaks into mountain songs, and Seb, salty sea shanties of lyrical beauty.

They rise at the whip crack of high noon. A ploughman's brunch.

They ride Ethan's Harley, meandering the giddy corniche, negotiating the hairpins, to the village three miles away for their espresso fix. On days when the weather is under the weather, they make do with the Bentley.

The village hosts a minor tourist attraction which Ethan has yet to figure out what the fuss is all about. An artistic figure created his greatest work there during his productive 'blue' period. His lover, a woman old enough to be his mother, visited often enough to tease forth his inspiration juices.

There is a simple minimal tomb of the artist in the village. The artist passed on before his muse. Legend has it that he willed that his body be buried in two parts, one at the village where he took up spiritual abode, and the other together with his muse's body at her birth place when she herself eventually passes on. The logistics of executing this curious death wish fueled interesting conjecture as to the method and the process of just how his body was split asunder. Macabre. But charming.

There is some speculation about who the woman might be. But, that is yet another fireside story for a dark and stormy night.

Seb reckons this makes intriguing, tantalising grist for the literary mill, with the potential to spinoff a movie. His sixth sense tells him that he should trust his five senses on this. He takes a mental note of researching into this opportunity.

Ethan and Seb parse and ascertain the sprinkling of subconforming visitors and organised tourists milling at the village. Loud Americans. Impossibly nice Canadians. Zesty Latin Americans. Polite Japanese. Animated Chinese. Contemplative continentals. They have been tempted to pickup sweet young backpacker strays, but they are too socially languid to muster the emotional energy to sustain such binges.

They buy strawberries from the refugee teen hawking tentatively at the street corner. The teen flashes a grand smile such as only people who have nothing to lose, and nothing to gain, can give away. Seb senses a rare emotional flicker on Ethan's face. Ethan feels a slight envy for the teen's spontaneity flash, and the sheer largesse which he is capable of scattering so easily, with only a smile.

They ride back. In the late afternoon, they sail on Seb's yacht, closing in on the wind, tacking to the far cape yonder. Then round back on a run, wind pressing on their backs.

Ethan receives a commission notice from a renowned art museum. A study of mature femininity, in three art forms: Photography, Drawing and Sculpture. It feeds into an upcoming major international art exhibition, a marquee event, at the museum.

Ethan studies the commission brief.

The same mature model across the three art forms. The model is to be in the fifty-five to sixty-five age range. She is to reflect the average mature woman in the age range who is relatable to the target audience at large. And at a more sublime level, the model epitomises her zeitgeist, the spirit of the era. Thus, a professional model is not a requirement, even though the museum will defer to the artist to choose the model as artist-model chemistry is key to the project.

The model's identity is to be artfully obscured. Her face in the photos is to be subtly obscured, darkened or shadowed. Being an international exhibition which will go on a global tour, the museum desires to universalise the mature femininity study across cultural divides. For this reason, the model's identity is to be kept anonymous, so that there is no association or allusion to any particular cultural or ethnic group.

The artworks are to be sensual, just short of erotic, but not lusty or lewd.

The artist is invited to envision an exhibition museum pathway that starts with the overarching aim and theme of the project, photography, meandering onto drawing, and then culminating in a compelling dramatic sculpture piece.

The identity of the artist will be published. The intellectual property rights belong to the artist.

Ethan proceeds to source the model. He has five days to do this. The modeling work will be done in his home, in his studio where all his equipment are, over a week.

Ethan faces challenges. Models in that age range are typically married women who are wives and mothers. They have family responsibilities. They can't be away from their homes. The few who do not have family commitments feel uncomfortable with nude modeling, working and staying-in in a remote countryside location, in a cottage with a single male artist stranger. A lady with grown-up children offers to have her husband accompany her for the assignment, staying-in with her at Ethan's cottage. Ethan does not feel comfortable with the arrangement. The presence of her husband will inadvertently affect the modeling dynamics, potentially cramping the style of the model and the artist.

***

Chapter 3: A Model Mum

On the fourth day of the model sourcing, at wits end, Ethan has a minor epiphany.

Why not consider his mum, Emma? She is aged sixty, within the requisite age range. In fact, the median age in the stipulated age range, so she is a good representation, the golden mean. Emma has three children, including Ethan. All have grown up and flown the nest.

Emma's husband is a bigwig in an important organ of Her Majesty's government. The Foreign Office. He puts in many hours in service of this organ. He is on work travel close to seventy percent of the time. In the early days, Emma used to follow him dutifully on these travels, if only to stock up on her postcards. A wifely Sancho Panza on the strident heels of Don Quixote. But, she has grown tired of these airport-hotel carousel spins. And the numbing conversations with the wives of her husband's work counterparts, on the Emma of England, and the England of Emma.

So her being away for a week will not be missed. It will not overly deharmonise her husband's universe of God, Queen and Country.

Most pertinently, Ethan's mum fits the bill of the quintessential mature woman who is relatable to the audience. Her identity will not be publicly disclosed, so nobody will know it is she. Nobody will know the model is the artist's mum.

The snag is that she will be posing nude in front of her son. This posits an inconvenient moral dilemma of a non-trivial magnitude.

Ethan has never seen his mum in anything less than a sensible one-piece swimsuit. No childhood accidental bathroom ooops nudity flashes. No bathroom to bedroom ten metre sprint streaks. No teenhood inadvertent fleeting lingerie exposés. No spectacular wardrobe malfunctions. Ethan cannot remember a time when he had access to his mum's velvety lingerie stash, be it in her wardrobe or the laundry basket. Ethan had an austere, underprivileged, deprived, dreary childhood, starved of his rightful oedipal rations. It is a wonder that he is not a warped Freudian hairball today.

Ethan cannot remember any occasion when he had a discussion on sex, however remote and incidental, with his parents. What is his mum's sexual ethos? How will his mum react to the modeling request? And what will his dad, that is, her husband, think about this artistic enterprise?

Ethan bounces his idea off Seb. Seb suppresses an instinctive eeewww. He appreciates his chum's challenges and desperation. This commission, if it pans out successfully, will launch Ethan bigtime in the international museum circuit. And yet, there is the perturbing dissonance of mum posing nude for son, even if it is for art. High art at that.

Seb has met Ethan's mum at his family manor a number of times, mostly during his carefree university holidays, those salad days. The last time he met her was ten years ago at a family event at Ethan's family manor. She would have been fifty then.

Seb remembers a woman who is attractive in an elegant understated way. He remembers aspects of her form, but cannot recall for sure if she is averagely endowed or full-on buxom.

Seb remembers all this in a Brideshead Revisited-esque sort of flashback.

Seb knows that Ethan is asking a rhetorical question about his mum being his model. Once he has a brainchild of bee buzzing in his bonnet, he will pursue it to the end of the world.

"Seems like a good idea if your mum and you are comfy with the nudity-for-art bit. Why don't you call her now, and sound her out? She has always been supportive of your artistic endeavors."

Seb ponders where he will fit in the scheme of things if Ethan's mum agrees to the project. He is scheduled to stay with Ethan for two months. Will it be awkward? He will have to make himself scarce for a week. Maybe he will sail out somewhere."

"Time is of the essence. I will call mum now."

***

Chapter 4: Webcam Audition

Ethan gets up to fetch his laptop PC to make a webcam call to his mum. He returns to the living room. He fires up his PC on the coffee table, sitting across Seb.

Seb gets up to go to his bedroom to give Ethan the privacy for his tête-à-tête with his mum.

"Don't go. You're enjoying your wine just now. You're family. Stay. It'll be over in a jiffy. The webcam is not facing you anyway."

"OK, if you're cool. I'll just move to the patio for some air."

Seb brings his wine and e-book reader, and steps out to the adjoining patio. He hears Ethan tapping his keyboard in earnest. He immerses in his e-book.