For three years, the paintings had been stacking up against the walls of Rhys’s studio. Mostly landscapes: the Preseli Hills under lowering skies, the Teifi estuary at low tide, the Pembrokeshire cliffs captured in thick, honest brushstrokes. Everyone agreed they were beautiful. The bank statements confirmed they were unsellable.
The Bwthn Colony had eight members left. There had been twenty, once.
She walked in on a Tuesday in March, her bright American accent cutting through the warm, sharp smell of linseed oil.
“Megan Price,” she said, extending a hand. “Tourism Wales. Here to make the rest of the world fall in love with the place.”
Rhys showed her around, mostly to be polite. She stopped in front of the estuary piece for a long time.
“How much?”
“Three hundred.”
“I’ll give you five, but I want to use it in a campaign that launches in April.”
He almost said no. Something old and stubborn in him rose up to refuse. Then the stack of canvases caught his eye, and he thought of Catrin next door, who hadn’t sold anything since autumn.
The campaign went everywhere. Bus shelters in Manchester, Instagram feeds in Ohio, a double-page spread in Condé Nast Traveller. Find the view that found him first.
People did.
By the end of March, Rhys had sold eleven paintings. A gallery in Cardiff called. Then one in Bristol.
Geraint confronted him at the colony’s monthly meeting, standing with his arms folded, chin forward.
“You’ve sold out. Yewer a cap-it-tal-ist.”
The room went quiet. Seven pairs of eyes waited. Well, six and a half, Jim lost one eye in a brush accident thirty years ago.
Rhys looked at his old friend, at the paint under his fingernails, at the pride that had kept them all poor and righteous for years.
“Maybe I have,” he said. “But I’m also buying.”
He laid a cheque on the table: enough to cover the colony’s rent for two years. He had already purchased Catrin’s estuary study, Priya’s portraits, and Huw’s strange little abstracts; pieces nobody ever really understood, but that everyone secretly admired.
Geraint looked at the cheque. His arms unfolded, slowly, like a bird getting ready to take flight.
The tourists came that summer. Some of them found the colony, climbed the crooked stairs, and stood in the same rooms where the paintings had been made. A few bought things. Then more than a few.
By August there were twelve members. By autumn, sixteen.
§
In October, Catrin found Rhys cleaning brushes in the courtyard.
“What a month March was,” she said. “When you think about it. Everything changed in March.”
Rhys squeezed the last of the turpentine from a brush and held it up to the light.
“March,” he said with a smile. “It’s just another day. A Tuesday.”
She looked at him with quizzical eyes.
“Mawrth,” he said. “Tuesday, or March, if you prefer.”
