She would have no peace until the painting was finished. She had never known a piece of her work trouble her so much. To the unenlightened eye, it looked finished, beautiful. But to her, it was a fraction of what it should be, a vapid, flat representation of what she’d conceived in her mind’s eye. She had spent hours gazing at it over the past weeks. She had stared at it from every angle, in every light. Through her sunglasses, through borrowed prescription lenses. She’d moved it into her bedroom. She spent the first moments of the day looking at it in the pallid dawn light, and in the vivid yellows and purples as the daylight faded, silently pleading with it to reveal her what was missing.
It consumed her while she toiled at her day job, while she cleaned her teeth, while she washed up. On the train, crushed against strangers thinking about their day ahead, she visualised the painting with her eyes closed. It tortured her. She saw it in her dreams, exactly as she wanted it to be. She saw herself stepping back from whatever finishing touch she’d put to it. There was a feeling of peace.
But when she woke, it remained a pale reflection of what it could be. She must endure; there was no rest for her until it was complete.
About passion II
If passion I is about losing ourselves, passion II is about when something plays on our mind to the point of obsession, often to the detriment of other aspects of our lives.
