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I like that second idea... you know, getting in there and really recreating something is a bit like method acting, you get the mind working the same way, you adjust your attitude and outlook and put something down that is different than who you are. And Wynette may find that Qian sees all this stuff in her artwork that she never intended, or he recognizes that she's really good at what she doesn't want to be good at, either for personal reasons (maybe her most popular subject matter is something she hates to pain, writers can probably relate to that) or it could wind up being like therapy for her where she realizes she's been using her painting to cope with something and now she's buried or repressed it. Making a perfect reproduction of something is a heck of a skill, and it's something a lot of artists try to do (I went to the Louvre a couple years ago and you could see plenty of painters recreating masterpieces. It's part of the training. And I learned something very interesting in my art history class, which was that the period after the Renaissance had some of the worst looking art in history. Guess why. It's because the new wave of artists were looking at those fantastic paintings and just riffing and building off them instead of going out into the real world and observing the naturalistic world, they didn't continue using the techniques that were the hallmark of that era. This fraudulent imitation also makes me think of voice-overs and impressions. I try to do impressions just for fun and to help me write, and on Sunday I went to a voice acting workshop held by Jason Marsden. He told us that a couple of years ago when the Simpsons cast was holding out for more money, the studio went out to every voice actor in town who could do impressions, and ALL the actors out there absolutely refused to do it, not just out of solidarity but because they all knew that just sounding like Homer Simpson is not the same as being able to do what Homer Simpson does. So, if I'm reading your idea and the original story right, that means that Qian DOES have that ability, he doesn't just make paintings that LOOK like Rembrandt, for example, but he can think and invent and react like Rembrandt does, and that's just incredible and it's one of those things I don't think people would instinctively "get." It also brings up an interesting issue for Qian: what's his style? Maybe he's not famous in China, maybe he's been reproducing other artists for so long that he can't find his own. If his style is other people's style, he can't make anything unique and personal, and that's just the kiss of death for an artist... especially if he's drawn to express something deeply personal.

Great ideas. The second take got me thinking a lot about writer's block, how sometimes it's very, very hard to write. Or in this case, paint. Maybe we have someone that is the J.D. Salinger of painting, you know, made some great works and suddenly became reclusive, struggled with unwanted attention. But Qian started doing copies of the painter's work, and hw got so good at it that he decided to make a completely original painting using the famous painter's technique. And everybody believes it's a new painting from him, so he has to come out of his self-imposed reclusion to prove it's not his painting.

Maybe because our painter didn't fell well enough to make new paintings he decided to make "fake" copies of his own paintings. Good enough not to be noticed, but he didn't put that much effort to make them perfect. He put some deliberate mistakes so that some people could spot a "fake" one.

And all those mistakes are actually clues that will lead us to the Holy Grail! ...or not. Character thing's cool, too. You know, sometimes, you're taken over by this feeling of... "what am I doing?" You're making stuff and it seems the same and you feel like you're not creating anything, that you're treading water. Your ideas sound the same and your execution is parallel and boring, it's always the same pairings with the same problems with the same voices and you just feel like giving up. And what you don't realize until later, when you're struck with inspiration, or looking back from a distance, or when fresh eyes look on that bulk of work, that you can see that you've been swinging in the dark, finding the tiniest little thing and grasping for it without realizing it, you finally sense what it was you didn't know you were looking for. Or you've been in a hole in the ground, like an animal trap, and all this has been using your hands to feel the sides, now you know the scale and the shape of the hole you're in, and you can pull yourself out. All forward momentum isn't equal, sometimes it's like learning to walk again, it takes forever to get on your feet and take that first step, but once you do that, you can begin the process. And as artists, we're constantly having to relearn, and even though we know it, it doesn't make it any easier for those times where we're straining to put weight on that leg.

And it really opens up for a discussion of "well, why do we want the JD Salinger guy's paintings? What's the value we see in them?" Is it money? In that case, it's fraud. If it's saying something that's genuine, and true, who cares who says it? Was there a day where we were talking about a city possessing a private art collection? That might tie into this.