Ordinary Handsome

The sky was the shade of a fresh blue crayon, melted rather than pressed onto paper. The color bled into the canvas, cloudless, vast. It spread over a cluster of distant hills; they could have been mountains, diminished and diluted, unimportant. The view was an exaggeration of normal perception. The landscape wasn’t particularly wide nor deep, but the earth was bullied into appearing smaller, subdued, shy. The sky overwhelmed everything, and it seemed unnatural in this small corner of corn fields and scrub pines. Perception, David said, is everything. He took the photograph years before he painted it. It was haunting; there was no other word. He revisited the place several times over the years, always at the same time of early evening, when the sun became invisible but still cast blurred colors. But the colors and shadings never matched. Sometimes beauty could not be duplicated anywhere other than in his imagination.