Chapter 133
Elara
When I returned to the holding room ten minutes later, the first two batches of competitors had already been called to the competition floor. The room felt emptier, quieter, the remaining participants absorbed in their own pre-performance rituals—some sketching warm-up studies, others sitting with eyes closed in meditation, a few pacing nervously near the windows.
At one o'clock sharp, a staff member called for the fifth batch—my group. My heart kicked against my ribs as I stood, slinging my supply kit over my shoulder. Nine other artists rose with me, and we filed out of the holding room in tense silence, following the staff member down a corridor and through a set of double doors into the main competition hall.
The space took my breath away. It was a massive open studio with ceilings that soared at least twenty feet high, three walls of floor-to-ceiling windows flooding the room with natural light. Ten large easels stood in a row, spaced about six feet apart, each accompanied by a work table that held the standardized supplies provided by the organizers: a 24×32 inch linen canvas already primed and stretched, a palette, three water cups, several rags, and an adjustable task lamp for supplemental lighting. Competitors were expected to bring their own paints, brushes, and specialized tools—the materials that reflected our individual techniques and preferences.
The judges' panel sat at the front of the room on a raised platform—five people whose expressions ranged from professionally neutral to mildly curious. I recognized one of them as a curator from the Museum of Modern Art, another as the editor-in-chief of Art Forum. These were the gatekeepers of the New York art world, the people whose opinions could make or break an emerging artist's career.
The audience section wrapped around the sides and back of the studio, with seating for about a hundred people. It was already two-thirds full, and I didn't need to turn around to know that Julian, Sloane, and Ethan were somewhere in that crowd, watching.
The host—a woman in her mid-forties wearing a crisp black pantsuit—stepped forward with a microphone. Her voice was clear and businesslike as she outlined the rules: "Welcome to the Praxis Prize preliminary round. The format is as follows: First, all competitors will receive the same prompt, drawn randomly. Second, you have three hours to complete your work. Third, no reference materials or electronic devices are permitted. Fourth, all work must be completed independently on-site, with zero tolerance for plagiarism or proxy creation. Fifth, judges will score based on originality, technical execution, thematic expression, and visual impact. The top fifty percent will advance to the finals. Please take your positions."
I walked to my assigned station—number B-47, toward the right side of the row—and set my supply kit on the work table. My hands were steadier than I'd expected as I opened the kit and began arranging my materials. I started with the palette, then reached for my paint tubes, planning to squeeze out my usual working colors: titanium white, cadmium yellow, deep red, ultramarine blue, emerald green.
But when I twisted open the first tube and gave it a gentle squeeze, something was immediately wrong. The paint that emerged was too thin, almost watery, with a consistency that reminded me of paint that had been cut with excessive turpentine. The smell hit me next—sharp and chemical, nothing like the rich, slightly oily scent of professional-grade paint straight from the tube.
My stomach dropped.
I grabbed the second tube and squeezed a small amount onto my finger. Same problem. Too thin. Wrong texture. The third tube, my deep red, was even worse: the paint came out in clumps, separated and grainy, as though someone had deliberately contaminated it with incompatible mediums.
My hands began to shake. I moved through the rest of my colors systematically, a growing sense of dread settling over me like a physical weight. My ultramarine blue had turned into a muddy gray-blue, clearly mixed with another pigment. My burnt umber was so thick it was nearly solid. Every single tube had been tampered with.
Then I checked my brushes. The three main brushes I relied on for nearly everything had all been cut. Not damaged accidentally, but deliberately trimmed with scissors, their bristles shortened from their original length of about an inch to barely a quarter-inch, rendering them essentially useless for the kind of controlled, layered work I'd been practicing all week.
I stood there, staring at the sabotaged materials spread across my work table, and for a moment my mind went completely blank. I'd trained with these exact materials every single day for the past week, memorizing the way each brush responded to pressure, the drying time of each color, the exact ratio of medium to pigment that gave me the effects I needed.
Now they were ruined. All of them.
I raised my hand, signaling the host. She noticed immediately and walked over, her professional smile flickering with concern as she took in my expression.
"Miss Vance? Is there a problem?"
My voice came out thinner than I'd intended, though I fought to keep it steady. "My materials have been tampered with. The paints have been contaminated with solvents or other substances, and my brushes have been deliberately damaged."
The words seemed to echo in the sudden silence that fell over the competition floor. I was acutely aware of the other competitors pausing in their preparations to stare, of the audience shifting forward in their seats, of the judges exchanging glances.
The host moved to my work table and picked up one of the paint tubes, squeezing a small amount onto her finger. Her expression shifted immediately as she caught the chemical smell and felt the wrong consistency. "This is definitely not normal," she said quietly, then turned toward the judges' panel and gestured for them to approach.
All five judges came to examine my materials. The MoMA curator—a woman in her sixties with steel-gray hair pulled back in an elegant twist—picked up one of my ruined brushes and held it up to the light, running her fingers over the blunt, scissor-cut bristles. "This is clearly intentional sabotage," she said, her voice carrying the weight of decades in the art world. "The cuts are clean and deliberate. This wasn't accidental damage."
The Art Forum editor, a man in his early forties with wire-rimmed glasses and a thoughtful expression, squeezed several of my paint tubes onto a test palette. "The pigments have been adulterated with turpentine and possibly other solvents," he confirmed. "These are completely unusable in their current state."
A murmur rippled through the audience. I caught fragments of whispered speculation:
"What happened to her materials?"
"Someone sabotaged them?"
"That's the girl Julian Vane nominated, isn't it?"
"Do you think she did it herself for attention?"
"Why would anyone sabotage their own supplies?"
"Maybe she's trying to create an excuse in case she fails."
"Or maybe someone really did set her up."
"But who would do something like that?"