Bella Bartos

A Careless Mistake

My studio was my happy place. It was a museum of my art, and any stress I had before entering vanished when I walked in. I finished the last brush stroke on the canvas, and my landscape painting was done. I placed it in front of the windows behind my desk and easel to let it dry before I sent it to the owner. I washed my hands, stopping when I started to smell something burning. A towel by my dry rack had caught fire from the oil paint exposed to the sun and began fiercely burning the canvases one by one. I didn’t think before I started trying to save my expensive paints, and by the time I moved them away, embers of the canvases were on the floor and in the air. The embers sparked and flew around the studio, and the next few seconds were paper and anything flammable lighting on fire. I had to escape because the fire had turned into a blaze over what was once half of my studio. 

I grabbed my paints before realizing all my time and work on my paintings and sculptures would be left in ash when I didn’t save them first. I ran out of my studio onto the street, seeing the flames push against the windows, glistening in the sun. The amount of time and money that burned couldn’t be brought back without more time, work, and money. I had been exhausted from painting all day, lazily picking and cleaning up the studio the night before, and realized a careless mistake made all my life's work and money burn in front of my eyes.