Bella Swan was not an artist.
She could not paint. She could not draw. She could not sculpt. Those who can't do, teach. Bella, however, chose to study. She was not a teacher. Ever since she was young, she had a voracious mind that continuously craved for more. She supposed that was the reason why she chose art. There was an endless supply of art that she could learn and reach out for tracing all the way back to the beginning of time and it was something that had no ceiling or limit. There would always be art. Artists would always exist to create something new whether it be out of passion, boredom, or curiosity. She would be the first person in line, ready and overzealously prepared to study it. If she could, she would've gladly been a student for the rest of her life but at some point, she needed to graduate. At age 26, she was two years away from completing her doctorate in Art History and had a very comfortable job as a research fellow at the leading art museum in Boston.
Art was simple. She found that she could always lose herself in the gallery space and in the brushstrokes, textures, and colors of a work. It had a history and meaning and to her, it just made sense. It was safe and it was a shield away from life and reality.
She had grown up in the small town of Forks, Washington where for two weeks straight, she baked her famous chocolate fudge cookies as a bribe for the entire registrar department so they would add AP Art History into the curriculum. By her senior year, they finally caved and it was in that year, she discovered the beauty and pain of Goya, the humor of Velazquez, the passion of Turner, the pride of David, and the eroticism of Greuze.
In that year, she also discovered that people were complicated, stressful, and deceitful. Mike Newton, the star basketball player and boyfriend of three years had broken up with her only a month before graduation, deciding that the separation was necessary before college. It was purely out of care for her. She, after all, was going places and he was staying in Washington. She wanted to believe him and she would have if she didn't find him making out with Jessica a few scant hours later.
She shouldn't have trusted him. After all, he could never understand her budding obsession. She had dragged him to the Seattle Art Museum once and the entire time, she had to listen to him point out the naked women and make fun of their 'boobs'. There was only so much a girl could take.
That night, while Jessica and Mike were happily devouring one another's faces at a party, Bella came to two conclusions. One, boys were stupid. And, two, you could easily figure out someone's personality based upon their artistic inclinations and tastes.
She first applied her theory to her mother, Renee, who had always loved Monet and Pollock. On the surface, they were two polar opposites yet based upon their artistic styles, they fit her personality quite well. Pollock was known for his seemingly haphazard style yet his paint splatters were oddly musical, smooth, and flowing. Though his work appears to be chaotic, he always maintained a strict control over his brushstrokes, creating a symphony of colors and splatters on canvas. Monet was an extremely prolific painter who spent most of his later life living in a small town outside of Paris amongst his endless gardens of luscious flowers and ethereal water lilies and pond. He captured light and movement and the essence of natural beauty in his works. Their paintings described Renee perfectly. She was as free as Pollock's brushstrokes yet never lost control of her own life. She exuded light and had always loved nature and the outdoors that were depicted in Monet's works.
As she began to apply it to the others in her life, she quickly realized that she had stumbled onto something brilliant yet painfully simple. It became all too easy for her to read people and she grew uncannily perceptive and undeniably confident in her ability to deduce a person's character.
Then, she met Edward Cullen.
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Continue or no? I promise I will sound less like an art history textbook in later chapters. I just wanted to set up the basic premise and gauge interest. Let me know!
