It beats for me

I have painted all my life; mostly in my head. Nobody else will ever see those pictures. They will never be bought or sold. They are my own. They will die with the painter. It is the purest kind of art. The undernourished rest that escaped, did so almost in spite of myself. I was never into that. The larger market did not interest me enough to reach out a finger. I knew that in the end, they would demand the whole hand. Decades ago, I had two large one-man shows in two years, works that were easy for the public to love. Both sold out. It left me empty. All they showed me was a life of toil to fill demands that were not mine. I never held another one. 

The critics and the gallerists have always claimed that a painter should have no other mistress than his art. I certainly had a houseful of interesting mistresses, all of them beautiful. Not that I was a Casanova who'd fuck anything that moved. I simply had other interests that aroused me, even more than art. When I occasinally turned to painting, it was to express a sensation of fulfillness. Is a painter who is blessed with a perfect life and does not slither about in mental agony, worth a second look? Well, I really don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about my heart. 

It beats for me.