The Truth About Lorin Jones

KENNETH FOSTER,

Painter

Yes, I checked my records: Laurie Zimmern was in my second-year painting class in the spring of nineteen-forty-five, at Bennington.

I recall her perfectly. My legs may be shaky, but my mind is quite clear. Besides, I always remember my gifted students.

There weren’t so many as you might think. If I had one or two out of a class of twenty I counted myself lucky.

No, you don’t know right away. It’s not as easy as that. You see, it’s not just ability that makes for success. If you teach for as long as I did, you realize that in any year a few of your students may have real talent, and a few may have real ambition: the passionate drive to be an artist. In my second-year class at Bennington most of them usually didn’t have either, not so as one could notice.

They were nice enough girls. Several of them went on to marry well, and collect paintings fairly intelligently, because people like me and Garrett Jones had taught them a little something. But they weren’t artists.

Yes, talent and drive; to make it in the art world you need lots of both. If you only have the one, it’s a tragedy. I’ve known so many young people who wanted desperately to be painters. They’d have done anything for that, given up anything, worked night and day for years, but they simply hadn’t sufficient gift. You could see that their entire lives would be a misery.

Oh yes, I’ve tried to tell them, especially at the beginning. It doesn’t do any good; all that happens is that they class you as an evil life-destroying philistine. They add you to the list of the people who killed John Keats and let van Gogh die penniless, and so forth.

And then sometimes, what’s almost worse, you get the ones who have the talent but not the drive. They let their parents or their wives or their husbands talk them out of trying to become serious painters, because it’s not safe or respectable. They go to law school instead or into business or just have babies. The hours of my life I’ve wasted talking to those students! It’s awful to contemplate.

No, with Laurie Zimmern it was different. She had the ability: a wonderful, very subtle, color sense, and her drawing was exquisite. And she wanted to paint tremendously; I think that was almost all she ever wanted. But the world outside of the studio terrified her.

Well, for instance, I remember the reception for the Bennington student show at the end of that term. There was quite a crowd. Everybody in the department was there, naturally, and a fair number of relatives and friends and townspeople. It was the first time Laurie’d ever exhibited, and she was so frightened she literally couldn’t speak.

Yes, she did gain a little more confidence over the next year or so. But I didn’t think she’d ever have enough to make it. Only, you see, she was smart. She wanted to be a famous painter, and she wanted it fast. And she was intelligent enough to know what she was like, and that she desperately needed somebody to promote her work and stand between her and the world.

Well, that year, her junior year, she had three paintings in the student show, and it was clear to anyone who had any sense that they were by far the best of the lot. Garrett wanted to meet the artist, so I introduced them. I still blame myself for that, rather, though of course how could I have known? Anyhow, they met. Laurie saw her chance, and she took it.

Single-minded. You can say that again. She certainly didn’t let anything stand in her way. Or anyone. His wife meant less to her than an old paint rag. You know he was married then, I assume.

And I suppose you also know that he was married to my present wife.

Oh yes, he was.

No, if you want to know, that doesn’t surprise me at all. Garrett never mentions it now, but he and Roz were married for seven years. When he got the appointment at Bennington she gave up a first-rate job in New York to go with him, and took one in the dean’s office at half the salary.

Oh yes, I knew them well. Until Laurie Zimmern appeared on the scene we were good friends, the three of us, we did everything together.

I loved them both. They were fine-looking people, big and fair and full of energy. And extremely happy together. Roz had such warmth and wit and high spirits, she was always ready for anything, and Garrett was brilliant. I was only a few years younger, but I looked up to him intellectually: he knew so much, and his artistic taste and judgment were always impeccable.

Well, you see, another thing I’ve learned over the years is that some men, even brilliant men, are hopelessly weak where women are concerned. And of course there’s a certain sort of woman who can sense this, and use it to her own advantage.

I don’t think it had anything whatsoever to do with love, at least not on her side. If you want to know my opinion, the only thing Laurie Zimmern ever loved was her painting.

Oh, I suppose she was beautiful. Well, she would have had to be, to interest Garrett, and she would have had to be gifted.

Yes, it’s true people often say that. And I can’t deny there’s a similarity, especially in her early paintings. But even then Laurie’s work always had a kind of mystical, surrealist side to it that mine never had — that I never wanted it to have, either.

No. It wasn’t a matter of influence; it was something more basic, I think: a similar way of seeing the world. Of course I did teach her some technical things. And I suggested the names of a few past artists whose work she might look at. That’s really all you can do for someone like that. It’s ironic, you know: it’s not the best students one can actually teach, it’s those who are merely clever and talented.

Very good. And if she hadn’t gone off the deep end and run away with that ridiculous young man — if she’d lived — I think she would be recognized now as one of the most important painters of her generation. Yes, absolutely.

I don’t see any contradiction. Genius has nothing to do with character; some of the greatest artists have been saints, and others have been bastards.

Oh yes. We see a good deal of Garrett and Abigail. At first Roz didn’t even want to hear his name, and one couldn’t blame her. But after Laurie left him and he remarried it was easier. We both like Abigail very much. Besides, it’s a long time ago now. And Roz is such a wonderful, generous woman: she doesn’t bear a grudge. As she says, an elephant never forgets, but who wants to be an elephant?

Of course, it will never be quite the same, but what ever is in this life? The four of us get on very well. Last summer we went on one of those Swan cruises together. We toured the Greek islands, and I did quite a lot of watercolors.

Yes, it was a great success. If my legs hold up we’re going to try one to the hill towns of northern Italy this coming spring.