Painting From Life

Brett Bale is living well for a Richmond artist. A big Scott’s Addition warehouse studio, an agent pushing his work, and his paintings are fetching good prices, attracting critical examination and entering museum collections. But he hovers on the verge of eviction from his studio as property values rise, and his agent’s occasional strange ideas about where his work should be displayed affect his income. His friend Paco needs startup money for a Brazilian kebob food cart.

And then there’s Olivia Martin, who as a young woman harbored artistic predilections that were quashed by her mother — a woman who, when Olivia makes a fuss about having to leave an art museum, says in stern terms how an artist’s path “is one step removed from a bum, not some fairy tale life like it’s told in that marble art palace.” Olivia possesses a knack for numbers, and pursues that course until she makes a hasty exit from the brutal financial canyons of New York to her Richmond home, at loose ends between jobs and confronting some serious family issues. Olivia gets shoved into Brett’s easygoing life first as a student and a possible assistant-in-training. Then things get complicated.