His hands are his most distinct feature. They are long and thin, but inexplicably expressive, particularly when drawing. Holding charcoal in both of his hands, he pushes the color across the canvas. Never hesitating, he moves his hands in rapid succession, making strong dark lines that fill the empty space. He takes a rag and smoothes the hard edges, shaping the curves of the body. Quickly, he turns his eyes toward the canvas then returns his gaze to the subject. Repeatedly, his dark eyes survey the precision of his work. Standing back from the drawing, he places one hand on his chin, the other on his hip. His hands unthinkingly touch the brim of his cap, adding to the smear of black stains. His thin body bends at the middle as he stands looking. He moves to one side of the drawing, tilts his head to the right and purses his lips. Then he takes hold of the drawing and turns it, first to the left, then to the right, viewing it from all angles. Pulling a cigarette from his jean pocket, he lights it, takes a drag, holds it in his right hand, takes the charcoal in his left and continues to draw. I sit on the ground with my back leaning against a wall and watch as he works. I can’t take my eyes off of his hands.

Our relationship began as a summer romance. When we were first dating, I asked John to draw my cat, Mr. Russell. Mr. Russell was sixteen years old at the time, had very few teeth left, and thinning orange fur. John and I set up two chairs beside my parent’s bed and sat down. We watched the cat dozing amidst the covers as sunlight streamed through the window and warmed his body. John dealt with the piece in complete seriousness. He made sure to capture the content expression of the face and just the right lines to show the soft, matted texture of the fur. His serious gaze and quick fingers enthralled me.

I was beginning to glimpse the deep empathy that art can channel. The artist looks into the secret lives of people, nature, and objects. The artists that I love the most are those who live in deep empathy with the world. How else could a teenage boy find inspiration in a housecat? Or how could Vincent van Gogh create a painting, imbued with feeling, of a pair of boots? Animals and inanimate objects have an essence of their own, but our interactions with the world change them. A pair of boots is nothing greater than a pair of boots before they have been worn. The human life that touches the boots alters them through experience. And the memories that are created through the use of the boots get carried on through the life of the wearer.

Mr. Russell reminds me of when my cousin used to have a bedroom of her own, and the used syringes we found in her toy box, and the tragic letters of apology that her father wrote to her. Mr. Russell used to belong to my uncle and cousins. My uncle has a serious drug addiction and his family was evicted from their house several years ago. They were unable to bring their cat with them, so he ended up at our house. He has witnessed the lives and sad interactions of members of my family. He has been changed by them and has left his mark in their minds.

I remember the first time that I allowed John to draw me. Like most people, I have never been entirely comfortable with the appearance of my body. In particular, I am self-conscious about my thighs. I have my father’s thighs and they are not slender or feminine. John and I were sitting across from each other on my back porch a few weeks after he had drawn Mr. Russell. I was wearing blue jean shorts and a T-shirt. My feet were resting on the tabletop and I was leaning back in my chair, reading The Odyssey. My thighs were entirely exposed. He was drawing. Before I noticed, he had begun to lightly sketch my face onto his piece of paper. He asked me if he could continue, and I nervously said yes because I liked the feeling of having his eyes on me.

It had never occurred to me that my soft, round thighs could be seen as beautiful or artistic. I imagined that because John had taken figure-drawing classes he had seen countless naked, beautiful women. I imagined each of them as having the figure of Aphrodite. It came as a shock to me when sometime later I visited John at the Rhode Island School of Design and saw first hand that the models were not as I had imagined. Paunchy middle-aged men, old hippies with dreadlocks, and women with wrinkly midsections met my eyes. I realized that John does not see beauty in the conventional terms of my model fantasy. He finds beauty by empathizing with the world and striving to uncover the truth that lies in his subject’s being.

I imagine that living in this manner would be both exhilarating and immensely frustrating. The artist works in constant hope of reaching the transcendent state of recognizing and capturing true beauty. This leads to an insatiable creative hunger and if one does experience a moment of enlightenment, it is temporary and eventually lost. Although a piece of art may be deemed priceless or eternal, when broken down to its simplest elements it is nothing more than woven fibers and graphite. The very nature of the craft makes ambiguous the boundaries between what possesses true beauty and what is superficially appealing. True beauty transcends the physical, but art lives in the realm of the physical senses. In truth, it is the frustrating act of striving to find intersections between people and the world they inhabit that holds significance and a beauty of its own. This is what John has shown me.

Photo by Practical Owl