Page "romance" Paragraph 332

As for Donald, he actually sold paintings.

We all painted in our spare time, and we had all started as easel painters with scholarships, but he was the only one of us who made any regular money at it.

Not much ; ;

he sold perhaps three or four a year, and usually all to Joyce Monmouth or her friends.

He had style, a real inner vision of his very own.

It was strange stuff -- it reminded me of the pictures of a child, but a child who has never played with other kids and has lived all its life with adults.

There was the freshness of color, the freedom of perception, the lack of self-consciousness, but with a twist that made the forms leap from the page and smack you in the eye.

We used to kid him by saying he only painted that way because he was so nearsighted.

It may have been true for all I know, because his glasses were like the bottoms of milk bottles, but it didn't prevent the paintings from being exciting.

He also had, at times, an uncanny absent-minded air like a sleepwalker ; ;

he would look right through you while you were talking to him, and if you said, `` For Christ's sake, Donald, you've got Prussian blue all over your shirt '', he would smile, and nod, and an hour later the paint would be all over his pants as well.

Mrs. Monmouth thought of him as her discovery, and she paid two to three hundred dollars for a painting.

It was all gravy, and Donald didn't need much to live on ; ;

none of us did.

We shared the expenses of the studio, and we all lived within walking distance of it, in cheap lodgings of one kind or another.