Written by Suzy Park
Illustrated by Nahyun Song
My mom is a failed artist.
She’s good at the techniques, she says. She knows how to draw shapes so perfectly that they look
like photographs. Bottles, chairs, cups, books… She knows how to soften or roughen the surface, how to show
where the light’s coming from, and how to mix just enough of every color with subtlety.
She just hasn’t found her “style” yet.
At least that’s what she tells me.
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To tell you the truth, I don’t believe her.
Whenever I walk into my mom’s “studio”, I see a huge piece of paper in the middle of the room. It’s
not a canvas. We don’t have the money to buy one, she says. She’s always splashing it with paint or rubbing it
with pieces of crayon. The result is a weird mix of Matisse and Pollock. Very difficult to describe.
I often ask her what she’s trying to express through her paintings, but she never tells me. She just
smiles and says that she’s still figuring out.
I think she’s embarrassed to tell me that she’s not a very talented painter.
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I don’t remember a time when we had enough money.
My mom tries to sell her paintings whenever she has the chance, but it isn’t good enough for the two
of us to have a satisfying and comfortable life. I guess I feel a bit sorry, since it means that my mom cannot
buy any new paints or a decent canvas for her work. But when I was younger I used to hate the fact that my
mom was a painter. She never earned a lot of money and didn’t have any “successful” pieces. There was never
a time we didn’t worry about bills or lack of money.
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This morning, mom told me that she’d go out for groceries.
I know that she’s lying, that she’s trying to find a decent gift for my birthday, which is next Friday.
I decide to look around the house, to see if she’s prepared anything special for me.
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I slip into her studio, and turn the ligh