#207: Streets

Joshua picks up the charcoal. The earthiness of the stick sends a tingle up his arm and he feels the shape form away from his mind’s eye.

Embryonic curves appear on the canvas, all titled to the right-hand side, as if they are being chased by something. A fear? A memory?

He looks to the woman reclining before him, a white sheet lazily draped over her body. She looks directly at him, but she can’t see that he hasn’t actually drawn her. Not in any definable way.

These lines, singular yet swarming to make a whole, are of her. Of what he feels from her stare. It is as if she’s daring him to draw the real her.

And he thinks he is until she asks him should she remove the sheet.

He ignores her, unable to shake the terrible image that is morphing in front of him. There is a haunting to the shape, eventuated by the thick slabs of black.

He breaks off the charcoal and now draws her beneath the anxiety storm that surrounds her. Her eyes peer back at the viewer, demanding an explanation of how she is to survive the turmoil of her life on the streets.