I have this giant painting I bought second-hand years ago.
It’s a print on canvas called “Before Nightfall” and when I first saw it I was like, “I love how ambiguous this painting is” and the guy selling it was like, “Yeah, why is she catching a bird in a wedding dress?” and I was like, “Oh, to me it looks more like she’s going to free the bird from the guilded cage but has been caught in the act by probably the same person who has caged her and she’s wondering if she should fly away too” and he was like, “Huh. Maybe?” And then I said, “Or maybe she’s going to eat the bird because she’s hunched over it like a predator and she looks a little like I do when it’s 3am I’ve been caught in front of the fridge with a burrito I’m not supposed to eat” and he said…”I’m not sure-” and I said “Like maybe she’s a vampire and she’s really hungry and she’s already murdered everyone and wants dessert? Or maybe she’s some kind of ethical monster and she doesn’t want to eat the people she’s with at the party but she’s desperate so she sneaks into the bedroom to eat their parakeet but then she’s spotted by the mean girlfriend of the guy she likes and she’s like “Aw fuck” and is trying to decide if she should make up an excuse or just eat the girlfriend?” And the guy was like, “I don’t…um…what?” And then I offered him half of the price he was asking and he took it, and Victor wasn’t sure if it was because I’d baffled they guy or if he was now afraid that he was selling some sort of a haunted bird-devouring vampire painting.
Aaaaanyway (out of ADD meds, sorry) we moved a few months ago to a smaller house and I finally found a spot for this painting but then I noticed that there was what looks to be blood splattered and smeared all over this painting.
And I started wondering if maybe a murder had occurred when our old house was for sale and Victor told me I needed to stop watching so much Dateline and that it was probably just diet code so I just took pictures in case a detective needed it later and then I started scrubbing the painting but the blood (?) was not coming off and I was like, “OH THIS PAINTING IS DEFINITELY HAUNTED.”
But then I did a reverse look-up of the painting to see what it was supposed to look like without all of the blood and turns out the blood is part of the original painting. Or maybe it’s not blood and it’s burnt umber paint added to give it atmosphere? Or maybe it really is supposed to be a vampire attack and I was picking up on all of the subtle clues? Or maybe the artist was murdered as she was finishing the piece and never had a chance to clean it? Or, more likely, she spilled her diet coke on it and was like, “FUCK IT I GIVE UP. JUST LEAVE IT”?
Anyway, I don’t have an ending for this but I thought I’d ask your opinion about what you think this painting is about and also say that if you haven’t finished as much as you wanted to today, at least you didn’t spend an hour trying to scrub an art piece that is supposed to look like that after you took pictures of it in case it was evidence of a murder that never happened.