The Painter In The Cave

Be the world’s best painter and live in a cave.

Paint all the time, fill the whole cave with amazing, wondrous artworks.

Be too self-conscious, too self-critical or just too selfish to ever share the paintings with the big world outside. 

The cave is by the sea shore somewhere. 

You die an old man, just room among the paintings for to lie down on your final canvas as the last cavelight leaves your eyes. 

Water comes in some time later and ruins what is left of the paintings, returning paint pigments to the sea. 

Some small pieces of the wooden frames wash up on shore somewhere, where they sit undisturbed again for another lifetime or two.