Word: bedash

 

bedash

\ bih-DASH \  , verb;

1. to dash or spatter (something) all over: to bedash a salad with pepper .

2. to dash or strike against: windows bedashed with rain .

3. to demolish or ruin; obliterate: His dreams of glory were quickly bedashed .

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                Charles closed his eyes and stretched his neck from side to side.  He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet and curled his wrists.  In each hand, he held three medium sized paintbrushes, each one gripped between two fingers. 

                “Ok, I’m ready.  Start the music.”  He said. 

                Melissa stood far away from Charles, near a small stereo system.  On his command, she hit the play button for the CD player.  A loud, quick aerobic workout dance number started playing.  As soon as it began, Charles went to work.  He quickly bounded around the room and dipped each paintbrush into a different paint can, which he had positioned before Melissa had even arrived. 

                Once each brush had a color, he jumped to the large, wall sized canvas he had set up.  In time with the music, he threw his arms around, splattering the paint n the canvas in a haphazard manner.  Sometimes the brushes even touched the material, leaving multicolored streaks of paint that fluidly shifted from the color of one brush to another as he turned his hands. 

                He repeatedly dipped the brushes, not bothering to clean them between rewetting them.  The net effect was a messy, noisy color arrangement that quickly lost any coherence that Charles may have planned.  Most to the paint was splattered around the large canvases in small drops and globs, although there were quite a few streaks of color as well.

                Then the beat changed.  As soon as it did, Charles let the brushes fall and immediately rushed to grab a new instrument of paint dispersal.  This time was a bunch of rags.  He tucked a few into the waistband of his white sweatpants and held to at the ready.  Still keeping in time with the beat, he dipped the ends into waiting paint buckets and slung the colored rags around like small whips.  The paint flew around the room, most of it somehow managing to hit the canvas, but also staining almost everything else around the room as Charles danced around.  

                Once the first rags were too saturated with different colors of paint to be used, he threw them at the canvas, letting them either flop off immediately, leaving a large splotch, or run down the material, leaving a thick, globby line of color.  He then grabbed another set of rags.  This pair he gathered up and held like a pair of slings. 

                He dipped the cloth into cans of paint and whirled them around in time to the music.  Drops of paint flew everywhere, even traveling far enough to hit Melissa, who now knew why she had been told to wear old clothes.  He soon released the loads of color at his target.  Each large glob of paint hit the canvas with a wet thud that the music didn’t quite drown out.  Wet, thick rivulets of paint ran slowly down the canvas from the main splatter, mixing with the still wet paint Charles had deposited before. 

                Several more of these large splotches soon appeared as Charles repeated his paint sling trick.  Thos soon became too full of paint as well, and were discarded.  The third pair of rags came out, and were quickly wrapped around his hands like boxer’s tape.  He dunked his hands into cans of pigment and proceeded to attack the canvas with his cloth and paint covered hands.  As always keeping in time with the rapid beat of the music, he punched, slapped, palmed, and poked the canvas, never seeming the have any reason for doing any of it.

                When the beat finally changed, Charles had timed it perfectly so that the rags covering his hands had become too saturated to be of use.  He discarded them and went for another tool.  This one was once two old brooms that Charles had turned into one, with bristles on each side of the handle.  He spun it around like a bo staff, twirling and spinning it around his body with the beat.  The bristles eventually met paint, which soon met canvas. 

                The thin bristles of the boom left a multitude of thin, short, scratchy lines of paint, even as tiny droplets scattered around from the rotation.  Each side of the broom hit the material at a different angle each time, creating a criss-cross pattern that moved across the wide canvas along with Charles.  And with each dip of the broom, the colors shifted and changed in a chaotic assortment. 

                Then, the music stopped.  As soon as the room became quiet, Charles dropped his broom staff and looked at his work.  After admiring it for a moment, he went to Melissa.  His breathing was heavy, and his formerly white clothes was covered in sweat from his artistic workout.  Melissa took a step back from him to distance the smell of sweat and paint that radiated from him.

                “So, what do you think?”  He asked.

                “I think you’re crazy.”  She said, looking from him to the ‘painting’.

                “Aw, come on, really?  It’s brilliant though.  I get my workout in and make some money by selling the painting I make to some gallery or museum or something.”

                “People will actually buy that?”  She asked, pointing to the wild splatters and streaks of the painting.

                “Oh yeah.  All I have to do is make up some intellectual sounding mumbo jumbo and the art snobs eat it up.  I bet I can get a few grand for this thing easy.”  Melissa looked at the monstrosity of art again, wondering at the taste of some people.

                “Why not just laminate the room and sell that?  I bet somebody out there would love that.”  She said, looking at the paint splattered room.

                “I’ve tried that once.  It didn’t work out too well, actually.”

                “Too bad.  You’d be a millionaire by now if you could.”

                “Yeah, really.”

                “So, what do you do now?”

                “Now?  Now I just wait for it to dry, take a few pics and wait for a buyer.”

                “Ah.”

                “Want to see some of my other stuff while we wait?”  He asked hopefully.  Melissa thought about it for a moment before answering.

                “Oh, why not?  Can’t be any worse than that thing.”

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I can see this kind of art in a modern art museum, can't you?  Just like, random splotches and blobs of paint with a fancy description that makes no sense if you think about it long enough.  Yeah, those places are full of that kind of thing.  It's kind of funny to try and think up the descriptions though.