The Whispering Paintings

By Manasvi Mukherjee

Elias Farren had been a noticeable artist of that bygone youth, however he smoothly merged with shadows and now is a reclusive painter whom people have not seen or even heard of in a while. His atelier situated in the outskirts of the town and was ancient and tilting, seemed to have existed for ages and caught the imagination for pictures of the past. Stepping inside the place with faint light, one would soak the smell of oil paints and linseed as well as set eyes on the man’s great works of the hand which fill the walls – dark clad pieces which had mystery painted on them and had life in them.

There was no interaction with people for Elias as he had not been seen…the incident sent him to higher levels of roughness, storing his works in his workshop elder of walls, which can whimper at contempt and deliver only noises, discounting words and tongue. Time had gone further away and so had the people. It's really amusing to watch how things work. I quietly added pens and my paintings were to be my comrades.

But then, there was alteration.

It started quite nascent. Elias had been working at his easel for hours when he finally stood up to observe the portrait of a woman he had created. It was a rather familiar portrait because Elias had done so many of her before, but this time her eyes were unsettling, as if indeed they were permanently affixed to him. Elias felt the woman in the portrait was almost alive. As he looked closer at the picture, he could almost hear someone whispering to him.

He however thought it was merely an imaginary construct conjured by his tired brain. But that was until that one night when he stood in front of another.

By Manasvi Mukherjee