Trending: Art - Lydia Kaufmann

TW: Self-harm, Substance Abuse, Depression

“My god, Lydia. Can your artwork be any more depressing?” Shelia asks herself, grimacing at the 4’ x 6’ canvas leaning on the table.

“It can be,” a creepy voice responds, the canvas is hiding a petite body as she sits at a table. Shelia, nearly jumps out of her shoes, profusely launching a barrage of curse words, as she normally did when her older sister creeped her out.

“You poop shit, say something if you’re going to hide behind your insane artwork. I can’t believe we are related, for fuck’s sake.” Shelia grabs a Pop-Tart packet from the cabinet and slams them in the toaster, getting crumbs everywhere in the process.

“It’s not my fault you’re not as perceptive as me.” Lydia says, peeking her head around her canvas, her green eyes stare at her younger sister. “I appreciate the proper critique of my artwork. I do believe it’s the most depressing thing I’ve made.” Lydia leans back in the chair and tilts her head backwards, balancing on two legs and making her sister nervous.

Shelia looks away, a pissed expression still hangs between her ears. Her long, blonde hair and tall frame is a stark contrast to that of her sister’s short, black hair and compact size, but their faces could be carbon copies of each other. It’s as if their mom had a printer but black and white ink on one print, and full CMYK on the second print. “I’m sure your artwork will turn heads like always.” Shelia said. The Pop-Tarts emerge from the toaster, Shelia taking a paper towel and snagging the breakfast squares while they are hot.

“When you get to college next year, you’ll change. You’ll figure yer’self out there ya young sprout.” Lydia says in her old prospector voice.

“Not if I’m going to be a freak and talk in weird voices like you.” Shelia replies, giving her sister the stank-face as she slinks around the corner. Lydia hears Shelia run into something around the corner, cursing more as she walks out the door to catch the high school bus.

- -

It’s been two years since their mother passed away, Lydia’s fight for custody of her little sister is finally behind her, and she is ready for the last college art show. She spent two months working on the final piece of her thesis showcase, and felt it was the coup de grace to all the hard work she had put in. It was her final tribute to her mother, the grief stages of losing someone that inspired you and putting that grief on canvas. Mixed medias of clay and wires, paints and pastels, not to mention the secret ingredients: blood, sweat, and tears. Lydia felt she couldn’t fail and that she would sell these grisly creations. There’s always someone that has the eye for macabre like she does. Though, she found this angst and confidence in the wake of her mother’s passing. That is something she tries to show in her artwork as she went through the five stages of grief.Shelia even helped on one of the canvas pieces… it added a brevity of peace in the sea of confusion and pain.Lydia is ready for this year to be over, and this is the final piece of her closure.

The one thing Lydia and Shelia don’t have to worry about is money. Their mother left them a hefty inheritance on her life insurance.Their father left a long time ago. Lydia barely remembers him, and he’s never bothered reaching out, even when their mom died. Lydia puts her empty bowl in the sink, tilts her canvas over, and carries it out the door. Her 2024 Ford Edge, she got with the inheritance money, has immense space for her large artwork, though she looks almost like a child when she’s driving around in it.

She makes her way to campus and pulls into the parking lot near the art building. She puts her hazard lights on, and steps out of her car to unload her final piece without having to carry it across campus.

“Is that it?” a voice asked while her back was turned. Lydia turns around to see Dylan, her classmate.

“Yup! Took forever but I think I nailed this last piece.” Lydia replies, sliding her large canvas out of her trunk and seeing Dylan’s eyes widen as he observes the painting up and down. His slack-jaw is the reaction Lydia wants from anyone viewing her work. The canvas has a miasma of dark blues, browns, and blacks from the acrylic pours that cover most of the canvas. As she continues to slide the painting out, Dylan’s eyes focus on a plaster mold of a face breaking the polluted surface at the top of the canvas. Like Han Solo frozen in Carbonite, the figure appears to be pushing its way through the surface with a ripple effect around the extremities that are sticking out.

“Whoever is breaking through the canvas, they are doing it in a contorted way.” Dylan thinks to himself. Dylan could see the expression of pain Lydia put into her work, her feelings breaking through the cesspool of depression; he couldn’t imagine losing a person he cherished like his mom.

Lydia hopes that the haunted expression she formed through hours of relentless sculpting, shaving, and smoothening of the crafts she added, that people could see the emotional torture throughout the entity emerging through the otherworldly portal between the frames. She wants people to feel like they want to pull this figure out of this puddle and save their soul, but also not want to disturb the beauty of sorrow she was encased in.

“I mean… It’s something alright.” Dylan says coldly.

“What do you mean?” Lydia asks.

“It’s… sort of similar to your other two pieces. I mean, I know it’s supposed to be a set, but this one… it doesn’t change enough?” Dylan asks himself, as if he knew it isn’t the right thing to say but instinctively gives out unsolicited advice to someone that spent the better part of two months crying over what he just casually dropped as a repeat of her last piece, which felt like a stab to Lydia’s gut.

“Okay, well what do you think I should fix, since you have an opinion.” Lydia asks in a sarcastic tone, not appreciating the advice of another man who gives out shitty criticism without being asked.

“I’m sorry, I know this is about your mother and I didn’t mean…”

“Go ahead, ass hat. What do you think I should do?” Lydia doesn’t feel like playing coy anymore.

“Well… I love what you did here with the face, but…The medium you used isn’t… lifelike enough? It doesn’t have that punch? I would feel possessed to pull this person out of the darkness if the face had… something… that missing… realism.” That comment. Like Dylan just reached into her subconscious and found the one thing she didn’t want anyone to feel, the first critic other than her sister, and he’s feeling it.

“Are you kidding me? Missing the realism?” Lydia feels a burning fury within her soul at his comment and his askew view of the amalgamation of suffering she created.

“But I mean, I have been looking at your work for months, others are going to love it when they see it for the first time. I’m just another shitty art student in your class with an opinion, take my word with a grain of salt. You’re going to kill it.” Lydia looks at him, knowing he probably feels bad about his earlier comments.

“Whatever. I guess I can see what you mean. Thanks for the comment.” Lydia slides the painting back into her car.

“Wait, what are you doing? Aren’t you bringing that in?” Dylan asks.

“After your comment? No, I got a couple of days left. I can stare at it some more.” Lydia hops back into her front seat, turns the hazard lights off, and pulls out of the loop on her way back home.

“Fuckin’ Dylan. If I can’t convince that brain-dead troglodyte my painting feels real, how am I going to convince some art critic or rich snob,” Lydia’s thesis exhibition is on Friday, and its currently high noon on Wednesday. That gives her roughly 30 hours to come up with an idea to put this over the edge, fix it on her painting, blend it in, and bring it back to school with enough sleep to not look like an actual ghoul during the show.

- -

Around 5 pm, Shelia comes home. She saunters her way through the house to see the hallway door that leads into the garage, ajar. Lydia converted the garage into her art studio since she is the only one with the car. The last thing Shelia was learning from her mom was how to drive before she passed away, so she’s been hesitant to learn again. Shelia peeks into the garage to see the painting leaning on the art table.

“Ew, I thought she turned that in.” Shelia says out loud.

“I was going to.” Lydia says, too frustrated to make a creepy voice as she sat behind her canvas. Shelia gasps, holding her chest and about to curse, but Lydia sticks her head out. Shelia sees the sad look on her sister’s face. “I got told that it didn’t look real enough by some dipshit.”

“What!? That’s insane. That painting freaks me out, along with the other ones you did.” Shelia says, attempting to make her sister feel better.

“I think I need a hug.” Lydia says, looking at her sister.Shelia doesn’t hesitate, her sister doesn’t ask for physical affection often, so she scurries over and embraced her as she slumps. To Lydia, the warm embrace of Sheila’s brightly colored self, felt like a hug from their mom. Shelia is a warm light Lydia forgets she needs sometimes to pull her from the spiral.

“Thanks sis, I think I got it now. I gotta make this painting feel… real.” Lydia says. Shelia looks down at her and gave her a smile.

“Well, it looks real to me, but I hope you figure it out.” Shelia heads out of the garage, “If you need anything, let me know. Don’t stay up too late.” Shelia says as she leaves the door ajar.

- -

Lydia walks to the other side of the room and opens a toolbox. She looks at the digital clock on the wall. 11:30 PM. “Shelia should be asleep by now.” Lydia takes out a couple of plastic baggies from the hidden compartment she made with her crafting skills.

“I think six should do it.” Lydia pre-heats her oven she uses for baking clay and pulls out a bag of marshmallows from the cabinet, along with some graham crackers. She opens a drawer and pulls out a bar of Tony’s Chocolate and breaks it up into pieces and puts it to the side of the other sweet treat. She makes her way to the kitchen to grab a glass dish and brings it back, placing the marshmallows in a row, followed by a piece of chocolate on top. She slides the dish into the oven and sits back at her art desk. Opening the bag, she pulls out six dried mushroom caps.She eats one, gagging at the taste as she chews it, the rough texture in each bite makes her shiver. She opens her mini-fridge next to her desk and pulls out a can of sparkling water, pops it open and chugs a portion of the can.

Looking back into the oven, the marshmallows looked baked, and the chocolate melted, so she pulls it out and places it on a heat-resistant mat, her mouth watering as the initial drug start to kick in. The microdose of shrooms makes her feel happy, a welcome escape from the depression hole she had been in. She scoops up a chunk of the sweet concoction with a graham cracker, places another dried mushroom, and takes a bite. The warmth of the sweet dessert sandwich overpowers the fungi jerky, all of it melting in her mouth as her body acclimates to the sensation of drugs entering her system.

The second bag is her art assistant. Her mind begins to wander as she pulls out a pre-rolled joint.

“Feeling real.” Lydia thought, lighting up the joint.

“Feeling… real…” Lydia takes a hit, breathing out the smoke and watching it twist into itself. The stagnant air of the garage allows the smoke to linger. She takes another hit, tilting her head back and blowing the smoke straight above her. She rubs her arm with her free hand, the joint still burning in her left hand. Her skin has goosebumps from the smoke caressing her body, her mind becomes lifted as her feet feel grounded to the air that dangles from the stool she is sitting on. Her skin feels… her skin… feels.

- -

The night of the exhibition arrives, and people huddle around the triptych of paintings Lydia has presented, each of the paintings is placed on a large triangular pillar that you have to walk around in order to see each panel of her devastating story.

Her first artwork is visible when you walk in, Dylan saw so many people ogling it; he hopes he can get half of the eyes her artwork usually gets.The first panel, titled ‘The Agony Of’ shows the beginning of her loss, depicting a person falling into an abyssal ocean full of monsters of unknown shapes and sizes. The surface of her painting has a bumpy texture from the individual stippling dots of paint she meticulously added, the dots get bigger as your eyes move towards the bottom of the painting. The once small bumps morph into the raised mounds of monsters in the darkness that you can only see from the side of the painting. The effect has people staring at it from all angles and gives a strong impression of the next piece.

‘The Peace From’ represents the chaos from loss, and the struggle of pulling yourself out of it. At the top of the painting is a light, a hand reaching out of the canvas with fingers stretched out reaching for the figure in the shadow. It’s another painting where the lighting and angle gives you different perspectives on both figures, like the previous painting. The unknown figure that was once a small speck and not the focus is now larger in the frame, whereas the monsters were the main focus on the last one. People did not stick around this one because everyone is gathering at the last creation and causing the most commotion.

Dylan sees Lydia hiding behind the crowd, watching, and probably listening, to the flurry of voices surrounding her last panel. “Wow, you really did it.” Dylan says, approaching Lydia, “I heard some people want it for their gallery.” Dylan notices her outfit is nicer than her normal gothic attire. She still has her sunglasses on, despite it being an indoor event and 7:00 PM.

“Well. I guess you helped, so thanks.” Lydia replies, giving a side glance and a smile.“Sorry for my snarky response.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it.” Dylan nudges her arm with a playful hit, causing Lydia to wince in pain. “Whoa, my bad, I barely touched you.” Lydia pulls her arm away from Dylan.

“No, it’s just… I had an injury there from… art.” Lydia says, the black sleeve of the coat she wore looked a little wet. Lydia shuffles her way through the crowd and out of sight.

Dylan looks back at the painting. ‘The Journey to,’ the title of the final artwork Dylan remembers seeing the other day, but now it looked completely different. “The acrylic poured surface now have these red tendrils veined throughout the crevasses of the acrylics, almost as if she added a mixture of yarn and glue to simulate the veins, sinews, and hair-like textures.” Dylan places himself amongst the crowd, listening to everyone speak about the face. “That face I saw the other day… it looked nothing like that plaster mold.” The eye had this glazed, dead feeling that the previous glass bead with an eye printed inside of it lacked. The amount of work she had to accomplish, the discolored greys and yellow airbrushing, even adding a layer of UV Resin made the eye feel real, and lifeless. The cheek that was previously protruding wasn’t a scratchy plaster chin anymore, but a swollen jaw that had smooth strips of leather she carefully placed to look like muscles under the skin, with the expression frozen in disdain as the figure contorted it’s way to the surface. The added glossy layer of resin she poured over it to make it look like it’s breaking through the torrid liquid surface made it so hard to spot the places she blended from where the former mold attached. There is even a smell of fresh hairspray and… mildew that somehow added to the wretch.

“My God.” Dylan’s mind fixates on the hands. “Those hands… that extra layer of clay fragments that look like bone chunks sticking out of the hands… How did she sculpt new ones that fast?”

“My mom helped.” Lydia says in a demonic voice. Dylan yelps, causing most of the exhibition to turn around and stare at him. Dylan feels every eye in the room on him.

“Sorry! The painting just spooked me!” Dylan laughs, and everyone murmurs to themselves and returns to their thoughts and unwelcome opinions. Lydia leans over and pulls Dylan down by the arm to whisper in his ear.

“I also put a little of myself in the painting too.” She whispers. “It takes a lot of hairspray and resin to get some materials to stick… I feel like it’s going to get better with age.” Dylan feels Lydia’s hand crawl up his back.

“Thanks for the help.”