I used to believe in love. I guess everybody can say that. This picture is from a painting I created in 1998 titled “Meeting In the Park”. It depicts a scene of a woman walking towards a man who is waiting for her. They are meeting in the park for a romantic rendezvous. The original is in color. I’ve applied some filtering for a different effect here. I think I was painting a fantasy of myself in a different time and a different place, being in love. The reality of my life was such that the great love I’d dreamed about sharing with my husband for the years while he and I were having a long distance relationship had turned out to be a nightmare.
I can’t remember too much about 1998. I was 27 for most of that year. My birthday is November. At the time I painted “Meeting in the Park” I would have been married a little over a year. We celebrated our first anniversary in April 1998. We were already having major problems. I think he might have already walked out on me at least twice by then. I believe he walked out on me something like three months after we first got married and then several months after that. And in the years to follow several more times until the number of times got embarrassingly ridiculous.
What I do remember about 1998 was that I met Dr. A that year. Dr. AÂ is someone with whom I had a brief fling. He was a college professor and a family therapist. I met him via Yahoo Personals. I don’t know if they still have Yahoo personals; but I had put an ad on Yahoo Personals and it intrigued a few gentlemen. Dr. A was one of those gentlemen who responded to my ad with interest. We “connected”.
I have this idea in my head of the perfect man for me. He has always been an older, very distinguished, perceptive, philosophical, deeply feeling, highly creative, strong, independent thinking, loyal, honest, upstanding gentleman with a very male voice. I think I might have mistakenly attributed many of these characteristics to Dr. A. soon after our first virtual encounter. I was very lonely and in a great deal of pain at that time; and talking to him on the phone was very comforting at those times when I needed comfort and very erotic at those times when I was feeling in a certain mood. I probably thought I was in love for a minute.
I think I might have painted “Meeting in the Park” many months after things ended with Dr. A. If memory serves correctly the fling with Dr. A ended in March 1998. I don’t think I did the painting quite so early in the year. So it’s interesting because I have to wonder where I was in terms of how I was feeling about the whole subject of love at the time I did the painting. Things hadn’t ended necessarily well with Dr. A; and my marriage would have continued to be unpleasant; so it is interesting that I felt inspired to paint such a scene.
But I’ve always held on to the idea of this great love. It’s been the subject of many of my creative endeavors. I realize at this stage in life that this great love I have tried to capture in painting and write about in my unpublished novels is not a love that most people experience. It’s a love that can only be experienced between two extraordinary people. For me, the only way I can experience such a love is vicariously through characters I dream up.
