THE MEMORY PAINTER
Author: Gwendolyn Womack
Release Date: April 28th, 2015
Publisher: Picador
Internationally famous and reclusive artist Bryan
Pierce has a secret. He paints memories of people who have lived in the past.
His whole life he has suffered from these recalls. To keep his sanity he paints
the dreams and hides from the world—until at an art opening, Linz Jacobs sees
one of his paintings that is identical to a recurring nightmare she’s had her
whole life. When they meet it becomes the catalyst for Bryan to begin to
remember the life of a neuroscientist who died in an accident along with his
wife in 1980, right as they were on the brink of curing Alzheimer’s. Solving
the mystery of their deaths will lead Bryan and Linz to an even greater legacy
buried deep in the past. Both a thriller and a timeless love story, THE MEMORY
PAINTER spans six continents and more than 10,000 years.
Book Trailer
Excerpt...
CHAPTER
ONE
The
paintings hung in the dark like ghosts. Too many to count—
not an
inch of wall space remained. The canvas eyes looked alive
in the
darkness, staring at their surroundings as if wondering what
alchemy
had transported them to this place.
The
artist’s loft had an industrial air with its Lego-like windows,
concrete
walls, and cement floor. A dozen bolts of Belgian
linen
leaned in a corner next to a pile of wood waiting to be built
into
frames. Four easels formed a circle in the center of the studio,
a
prepared canvas resting on each. Their surfaces gleamed with
white
gesso that had been layered and polished to an enamel-like
perfection,
a technique used in the Renaissance to obtain a nearly
photographic
realism. This artist knew it well.
The paintings
themselves were an eclectic ensemble. Each image
captured
a different time in history, a different place in the world.
Yet
the paintings had one thing in common: all depicted the most
intimate
moments of someone’s life or death.
In one
painting, a samurai knelt on his tatami, performing
seppuku.
He was dressed in ceremonial white, blood pooling at
his
middle. The ritual suicide had been portrayed in excruciating
detail,
the agony on the samurai’s face tangible as he plunged the
blade
into his stomach. Behind him, his “Second” stood ready, his
wakizashi
sword poised to sever the samurai’s head. In the next
painting,
an imperial guard on horse back dragged a prisoner across
a
field in ancient Persia. And further along the wall, an old man
wearing
a turban stared into the distance, as if challenging the artist
to
capture his spirit on the last day of his life.
The
studio had three walls, and the entire space was closed off
by an
enormous partition of Japanese silk screens. On the other
side
was a spartan living area with a kitchen hidden behind a sidewall.
Down
the hall, there was a smaller room unfurnished except
for a
mattress on the floor. The artist lay sprawled across it on his
stomach,
shirtless and in deep sleep.
Without
warning, he sat up and gasped for air, struggling out of
the
grasp of a powerful dream.
“I am
here now. I’m here now. I’m here now. I’m here now.”
He
chanted the words over and over with desperate intensity as he
rocked
back and forth in a soothing motion. But then, just as suddenly,
his
body went slack and his eyes grew distant as a strange
calm
descended over him. He got out of bed.
Entering
his studio like a sleepwalker, he selected several brushes
and
began mixing paint on a well- used wooden palette, whispering
words
in ancient Greek that had not been heard for centuries.
His
hands moved with a strange certainty in the dark. Time
passed
without his awareness. He painted until the hours towered
above
him, pressing down upon his body and begging him to stop.
His
feet grew numb, his shoulders stiff with pain. When the sun’s
glaring
noon light reached his window, a piercing pain lanced
through
his head, jarring him out of oblivion like an alarm clock.
I am Bryan Pierce. I am standing
in my studio. I am here now. I am
Bryan Pierce. I am standing in my
studio. I am here now. I am Bryan Pierce.
He
forced the words into his consciousness, grabbing onto their
simple
truth like a child reaching for the string of a kite. The words
were the
only thing that kept him from flying away.
Bryan’s
legs buckled and he sank to the floor, leaning against the
wall
for support. Hands dangling over drawn- up knees, his arms
were
streaked with every pigment on the studio shelf. His bare
chest
displayed similar stains.
He
forced himself to study his most recent work, knowing that
this
was the quickest way to assimilate the dream. Only when he
felt
able to stand did he get up and walk over to the video recorder in his studio.
It was the highest- end digital camera that money could
buy
and came equipped with an infrared setting to catch nighttime
activity.
He always kept it on. Bryan didn’t need to review the footage
to
know he had been speaking Greek all night again. But the
recording
proved that it had happened.
Most
mornings, observing himself on camera gave him some
sense
of peace. But today he didn’t feel like watching it—his vision
was
still too present, like a messenger in the room. Somehow, this
dream
held answers. But to what?
Originally from Houston, Texas, Gwendolyn Womack
began writing theater plays in college while freezing in the tundra at the
University of Alaska, Fairbanks. During that time she lived in St. Petersburg,
Russia on an independent study working with theater companies. She went on to
receive an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Directing theater and
film where she was encouraged to write her own material. After graduating she
focused on writing feature screenplays and was a semi-finalist in the Academy’s
Nicholl Fellowship. In 2009 she moved to Japan and began to write THE MEMORY
PAINTER the following year. Currently she resides in Southern California with
her husband and son where she can be found at the keyboard working on her next
novel. THE MEMORY PAINTER is her first novel.
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