Fast Fiction: Creative Process
"I'm going to do what I do every day of my life and that is remember how it was,'' says the holocaust survivor in Richard Mallinson's story.
Barton took up painting late in life but he became angry when people said that he was using it for ‘comfort’ in retirement.
‘It’s not painting as therapy,’ he growled, ‘it’s painting as bloody painting, simple as that.’
As soon as he began, he forgot the many years of working in a bank and now he could no more go to work than swim the Channel.
One day he sketched an elderly, bearded, blackcoated man who was gazing out to sea.
The man came up to Barton and peered at the sketch.
‘Hm’ he grunted, ‘you have lengthened the beard and shortened the nose but apart from that -’
‘I will paint your portrait from this, if you wish,’ said Barton.
‘No thank you,’ said the man, who then introduced himself as ‘Jacob Sterner, holocaust survivor.’
They went for a drink in a pub near the front.
‘I am afraid that you will have to pay, my friend,’ said Sterner.
They told each other about their lives.
Sterner said, ‘You have cut out your past and now live entirely in the present but I live in the past and am not interested in the present.’
As they were leaving the pub, Barton asked, ‘And what are you going to do for the rest of the day?’
‘I am going to do,’ said Sterner, ‘what I do every day of my life and that is remember how it was which is a process, I hope you realise, that is just as creative as all your sketching and painting.’
For a minute, Barton didn’t quite know what to say.
