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THE MEMORY PAINTER

Author: Gwendolyn Womack

Release Date: April 28^th, 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.

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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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