Abstract

It is childish. Jack thinks, it is childish. Everyday, he paints. Paintings filled with whites and greys. Angular paintings. Paintings of barns and oceans, old white houses facing grey seas. Ocean grey cut with white caps. There are not people in the paintings. Jack tried once. He painted a schoolhouse, a white flag pole, a red flag at half mast. It seemed appropriate to put a child in the picture. He drew a little girl sitting on the school's porch. The girl was round and soft. She looked like a refugee from another painting. Jack does not like most of his paintings. The lines are not right. The colors do not fit. Some, he just paints over. A few get stored in the back of a closet. And some are so bad that Jack throws them out. So bad, in fact, that late at night, Jack sneaks them into someone else's garbage. He does not anyone to think that he is responsible for them.