“An abstract painting is like excavating your emotions,” she said. “It’s not an easy slap-it-on-the-canvas thing. There are layers to get through before you can uncover what it’s about. You’re at the very start of the process. There are exercises you could do to jog things loose, and sometimes that can help. Take the painting off the wall and turn it around, see if it looks different from a different perspective. You’ve used high-contrast colors here, which suggests something dramatic. I don’t know what it is, but the more you paint, the more you’ll be able to excavate your own emotions.” She looked at me. “These are things I tell a lot of my students, but you’re my granddaughter. I can see this painting means something to you.”

“I want it to.” I felt a little uncomfortable. She was looking at me so pointedly.

“It’s the first one you’ve made since you were a child, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“The thing about Southern Cross is . . . you know, I hadn’t even seen the Southern Cross when I painted it. I didn’t see it till we went to Hawaii over a decade later. I painted these stars that I only knew about because Russ told me about them, so in a way they weren’t about the actual stars at all. They were about the way I wanted to incorporate Russ and my love for him into my work. I wanted to express something about the drama of falling in love, but also how we were only a small moment in time. In the scale of the universe, we’re just a blip. I don’t know if all that came through in the painting. It probably didn’t. It probably felt too personal to me and that’s why I never wanted to sell it.”

She placed the videotape she’d been holding on top of the stack that she had moved to the floor. “I’m telling you this because I’ve learned over my life that I come back to the same subjects over and over again. Not a repetition so much as a cycling. I think everything cycles around again and again. I come back over and over to the same subjects in my art, but hopefully with a bit more wisdom each time. I’m always making art about time. I don’t understand how it works, but I’m always interested in it.” My grandmother’s eyes were a clear, bright blue in her lined face. “This painting—your painting—its true meaning won’t be clear until you make another one, and another one after that. But for now, you should work on it until it’s finished.”

“How will I know when it’s finished?”

“That’s a question only you can answer. Has the painting said everything you want it to say?”

“Right now? No.”

“Then it’s not finished yet.”

Chapter 37