Chadwick Rye

Dawn arrives with a whisper against my cottage window, the gentle brush of light trying to capture my attention like an impatient child tugging at sleeves. I ignore it, turning instead to mix another shade of cerulean, this one darker, with undertones of violet that only reveal themselves when viewed from certain angles. Like a secret told only to those who know how to listen.

The canvas before me has been my companion since midnight, when I awoke from dreams filled with impossible colors and found my fingers itching with the need to capture them before they dissolved back into the fog of subconsciousness. Now, five hours later, what began as formless urgency has taken shape: a landscape that exists nowhere in this world but resides permanently in some corner of my mind, a place where shadows have texture and light has weight.

I am Corvus Thorne, painter of the between-times, as the villagers call me with a mixture of respect and unease. My odd hours and odder habits have become local legend in the twenty years since I claimed this abandoned gamekeeper’s cottage at the edge of Blackwood Forest. Children dare each other to approach my windows after sunset, hoping to glimpse the “midnight artist” at work by candlelight, my shadow thrown grotesque against whitewashed walls.

Few understand that creativity cannot be scheduled like market days or harvest seasons. It arrives when it wishes, often at the most inconvenient moments, during formal dinners at the mayor’s residence, in the middle of thunder-cracked nights, or while standing waist-deep in the cold mountain stream gathering smooth stones for my collection.

My most productive hours have always been those that others abandon, the liminal spaces between defined periods of day. The greyed boundaries that separate night from morning, day from evening, when the world holds its breath in transition and reality seems most permeable to imagination.

The half-hour before dawn, when night creatures seek their rest while day creatures have yet to stir, has recently proven most fertile for landscapes. There’s a stillness then, a pause between movements in the great symphony of hours, when colors reveal their truest nature without the harsh clarification of full sunlight or the obscuring blanket of complete darkness.

The canvas beneath my brush captures this threshold state, a forest path illuminated by the particular blue-grey light that exists only in that suspended moment. Not day, not night, but something between and therefore greater than either. Ordinary eyes would see merely gloom, but I have spent decades training my perception to recognize how shadows bloom with hidden color during these transitional times.

My neighbors find such practices peculiar. “Why not paint at a civilized hour, Master Thorne?” the blacksmith once asked while delivering the specialized metal tools I use for impasto techniques. “Surely the light is better at midday.”

I merely smiled. How could I explain that midday light is a tyrant that obliterates subtlety? That high noon presents a world stripped of mystery, everything exposed in brutal clarity that leaves nothing for the imagination to discover? Better to let him believe me merely eccentric than attempt to articulate truths that sound like madness to those who have never stood ankle-deep in morning dew, watching darkness retreat stroke by stroke across a meadow, revealing colors that exist for mere minutes before transforming.

The dusk transition offers different gifts, melancholy, nostalgia, the poignant ache of endings that promise eventual renewal. When I paint between sunset and true night, my brushwork grows looser, more emotional. These canvases often feature incomplete horizons, suggesting continuation beyond the frame. They sell quickly to wealthy merchants from the coastal cities who claim to understand their significance while missing their essence entirely.

But the truly strange hours, the ones that have earned me my reputation as a genuine oddity rather than merely an eccentric, are those that occur during what scholars call the dead of night. Three hours past midnight, when even insomniacs have surrendered to exhaustion, when taverns have closed and bakers have yet to light their ovens, I often find myself wide awake with the peculiar clarity that comes from existing completely alone in the conscious world.

During these profound silences, I paint faces. Not portraits of existing people, but visages that emerge from somewhere beyond conscious invention. They stare from my canvases with expressions of such specific emotion that viewers often weep without understanding why. These works I rarely sell, though collectors have offered small fortunes. They hang instead throughout my cottage, silent companions in my solitary existence.

“When do you sleep?” the apothecary’s daughter once asked while delivering herbs I use to create certain pigments. Her question contained genuine curiosity rather than the usual judgment.

“When the paintings allow it,” I answered truthfully.

Some nights I work until exhaustion claims me mid-brushstroke, awakening hours later with my face pressed against still-wet canvas, new colors embedded in my beard. Other times I sleep in concentrated bursts throughout the day and night, accumulating just enough rest to function before creativity demands my attention again.

The strangest productive periods come during storms. While sensible folk secure their shutters and huddle near fires, I often set up my easel outdoors, working furiously as rain dilutes my paints and lightning illuminates the landscape in staccato bursts of brilliance. These storm-paintings possess a frenzied energy unmistakably different from my dawn works or midnight faces. Collectors recognize them instantly—”Ah, one of Thorne’s tempest pieces”—though few realize they were created within the actual tumult rather than from memory afterward.

A knock at my door interrupts my dawn painting session. Unusual, few visit at this hour except in emergencies. I set down my brush reluctantly, the momentum of creation broken.

Lady Evelyn stands on my threshold, the mayor’s daughter who has recently developed artistic aspirations of her own. Her clothes are too fine for this hour and place, her riding boots still pristine despite the muddy forest path.

“Master Thorne,” she says without preamble, “I’ve come to understand your methods. Father says if I’m determined to pursue painting despite its unsuitability for someone of my station, I should at least learn from the finest artist in the region.”

I regard her with skepticism. Her previous attempts to become my apprentice have demonstrated more enthusiasm than aptitude or discipline.

“You’ve arrived at dawn,” I observe. “A conventional time for beginning the day’s work.”

“But you’ve been working for hours already,” she counters, gesturing to the clearly progressing canvas visible behind me. “The housekeeper saw your lights burning at midnight when she closed the upstairs shutters. And here you are, still painting.”

I say nothing, waiting.

“Teach me,” she continues, “not just technique, but when to paint. How to recognize the right moment when creation must happen, regardless of convenience. I’m willing to work at any hour, no matter how strange.”

Her sincerity seems genuine, though untested. Rather than offering immediate acceptance or rejection, I step aside to allow her entry.

“Sit,” I instruct, pointing to the single chair not occupied by painting supplies. “Watch in silence until the painting is complete. Then we’ll discuss what you observed.”

For the next two hours, as dawn transitions fully into morning, she remains motionless and silent, a feat of patience I hadn’t expected from her. I work without acknowledging her presence, falling back into the peculiar mental state where time becomes meaningless and only the conversation between brush and canvas matters.

When the last stroke is applied. a highlight of almost-white yellow where the sun finally breaks through forest canopy, I step back and turn to find her expression transformed by wonder.

“You disappeared,” she whispers. “Your body remained, but you went somewhere else entirely.”

This observation, unexpectedly perceptive, suggests potential I hadn’t previously recognized in her.

“The productive time isn’t about the clock,” I tell her, beginning to clean my brushes with practiced movements. “It’s about when the veil between what is and what could be grows thinnest. Sometimes that happens at conventional hours, but more often in the forgotten moments between defined periods, the transitions and thresholds most people hurry through without noticing.”

She nods slowly. “Like twilight. Or the moment between sleeping and waking.”

“Precisely. The between-times, when certainty falters and possibility expands.” I examine her with new interest. “If you wish to learn, your first lesson is simply to notice these transitions throughout the coming week. Don’t paint yet. Just observe how light, color, and your own perception change during these threshold moments.”

“At any hour? Even the middle of the night?”

“Especially then,” I confirm. “Creation follows no schedule but its own. The most profound work often demands sacrifice of convenience, sleep, and social conformity.”

Her expression reveals mingled excitement and apprehension, but something in her posture suggests determination stronger than I initially assessed. Perhaps she possesses the necessary temperament after all.

“Return in one week,” I tell her. “Bring no materials, just observations. We’ll determine then if you’re suited to the painter’s path or merely infatuated with the romance of artistic identity.”

After she departs, I return to my canvas, studying it with the critical eye that always follows completion. The forest scene captures exactly what I intended, that specific moment when night surrenders to day, when possibility crystallizes into actuality, when the world transforms one breath at a time.

Tonight, I know, creativity will likely strike again during some unconventional hour. Perhaps at midnight, when the cottage grows so quiet I can hear pigment particles settling in their glass jars. Or during the strange hollow time between two and three in the morning, when reality itself seems to thin and dreams leak into the waking world. Or possibly during tomorrow’s predicted thunderstorm, when atmospheric pressure changes make my healed bones ache and my perception sharpen.

Whenever it comes, I will answer its summons without hesitation or complaint. For I learned long ago that true creativity is not a trained pet that comes when called, but a wild creature that must be approached on its own terms, in its own time, with reverence for its mysterious nature.

The most productive moments arrive without warning or convenient scheduling. My only responsibility is to remain ever vigilant, brushes cleaned and ready, canvas prepared, spirit willing to abandon comfort whenever inspiration extends its unpredictable invitation.

The world may consider such devotion odd. The villagers may whisper about lights burning in my cottage at unholy hours. But those who have stood before my finished canvases understand, even if they cannot articulate it, some visions can only be captured during the strange, liminal hours when the orderly progression of time falters, and the extraordinary slips through cracks in the ordinary world.