Visual Language Magazine Contemporary Fine Art Vol 3 No 12 December 2014

VL
Any Colour You Like
Perhaps there is a reason I keep returning to music
that gives me a haunted feeling. The upstate house
that Victor and I bought once belonged to legendary
burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee in the
late 1930s. In the first few months of our residency,
I painted the interior of the house, along with doing
a few other repairs that needed attention. During
this time, I felt that there was a nonthreatening
presence in the house, occupying the third floor.
I was uncomfortable with the thought, but I always
felt welcomed in the home by the presence. One
night, while in a restless sleep, I awoke to see a
ghostly, ashen figure floating at the foot of my bed.
I felt conflicting emotions of shock and comfort…
but at the same time, I did not like that the presence
had found its way to my bedroom, as I had locked
the door to the third floor every night. That image
was to haunt me for some time.
As an epilogue of sorts to this ghost story, a year
or so later I approached a girl at my New York gym,
something I never do, and asked if I could paint her.
She agreed, but after many attempts in my New
York City studio, I did not feel that I captured her. I
finally did a large painting in my studio upstate and
found that suddenly the portrait worked. I hung the
painting in my bedroom upstate, because the background
seemed to match the wall color there. One
night I awoke to see the same pale, ashen-dressed
figure I had glimpsed two years previously… but
this time, thankfully, it was only my painting.
Through a neighbor and our landscaper, I later
learned that the ghost was not on the third floor,
but in our bedroom on the second story. Intrigued
but hesitant, I began to investigate the ghost’s existence.
My neighbor told me of three deaths in the
house; the ghost was the first of these. Ginny Augustin—herself
an artist—had died there, though
reports vary as to whether it was by murder or suicide.
After three months of our fixing the property up and
almost finishing the interior painting, a fire struck
the house. Three quarters of the outside walls remained,
and the top floor was gone. Investigators
attributed it to old wiring, but I felt sure it was Ginny.
Though I hoped her ghost was gone after the fire, I
still felt a chill in my spine every time I approached
the property. I worked in the studio while the house
was being rebuilt, but continued to feel apprehensive
until the old plumbing and wiring were hauled
away. I remember that moment clearly: After a day
of painting, I headed to the house without a shiver
in my spine. I knew, at last, that Ginny was gone.
The Ghost Paintings Series 1
RainerArt.com
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