"Who's the Father?" - very small painting

"Who's the Father"
acrylic on canvas
5" x 7'

Bea as in Beauty - very short story

Bea as in Beauty

By, C Heidi Drew

March 12, 2012

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. Beatrice found herself in the publication she was reading. This wasn't a studio or classroom. No surprise, really. The book was just about this very thing, wasn't it? Or was this all a dream? It didn't matter, the animals around her were adorable enough to paint. That was her next endeavor. Here she had it all and could paint from life, this life the one she was in now, anyway. But, she had never painted before.

Just then a bumble bee buzzed by her field of vision then dropped to the ground. She went over and studied it as it kicked it's wee legs. Bee, that was what everyone called her when she was wee, she thought. The legs stopped kicking. Observing it close up was fascinating; its detailed beauty – the soft texture of the yellow and black stripes that looked like fur, the same smooth colors on its six jointed legs, the light blue lace of its folded wings. She could paint these details, she just knew she could.

Delicately, she scooped the bee up and carried it with her down to the river for water in which to dip her brush. She placed the bee on the rock and squeezed out the paint on the pallet. When Beatrice completed her painting she signed it, “Bee” and lay back on the sun baked rock where she had worked.

When Beatrice woke up, she still had the painting of the bee but she was no longer at the river's edge and her dead bee body was gone. She tacked the painting on her wall, then sat under it and picked up the newspaper laying on her table next to the book.

“Artists' Self Portrait Contest”, written in yellow type with a black stroke around it caught her eye. That was it, her bee was a self portrait and she would enter it in this juried exhibition even though she had never painted before!

For now Beatrice wanted to sketch the lambs and rabbits and pigs and...oh what else was there? She didn't want to forget. There were bubbles with monkeys and rats and skunks in them. They were trying to get out but they were in tiny cages and on choke collars and being injected with drugs and castrated without drugs. She inhaled and let out a long sigh. No that was the horrific animal rights book she had been reading. Animals are too lovely to be tortured like this for mankind's selfish needs, she decided. Her paintings would have to share this plight. They couldn't just be about her.

Another bumble bee buzzed by her ear and landed on her book. She watched it for several minutes until it took off again. She followed it with her eyes until it disappeared through the door but the images were planted in her brain.