I met a man

I met a man at the weekend.

Nothing unusual in that, I meet a lot of people.

The man in particular was the boyfriend of my man’s ex-wife. So I’m the girlfriend of his girlfriends ex-husband. Who is someone I like very much and get on well with. Just cos you’re divorced doesn’t mean you have to start hating your ex. If you can be friends, and take the good forward with you, then all the better I think.

Well this man, who I hadn’t met before, and who I knew nothing of other than his first name,  was introduced to me at a family gathering. And as the summery afternoon wore on, and we all sat outside drinking and chatting, eating delicious barbeque food, and drinking some more, he and I became friends. It turned out we are both people who like people, and who both try to get the best out of people we work with, although our jobs are totally different.

As we talked and he asked me about being an artist, I talked about it, and in particular the two most complex pictures I’ve painted this last year – “Contemplating the shadows” and  “Peter and Miranda, past, present, and future” and then went on to talk about other work I’d done. He gasped at the complexity of “Contemplating the shadows” – a traditional landscape about the abstract relationship of one man and three women, and I smiled as I described it to him. My man who is always helpful went to get the i-pad that has some of my artwork on it, to illustrate some of the pictures I was talking about. There were an awful lot of them, as I am so prolific and I know it gets a bit boring as you go through them all, so I tend to flick through them, indicating the best ones. The thing that impressed my new friend the most was “Your attention to detail Jackie” and I could see that he was thinking about what sort of painting he would have done if he had the opportunity.

Later on as the day turned to night, and we both still sat in the garden, candles and fairy lights illuminating the darkness, the others at the party mostly inside and dancing, he and I drinking our way through the red wine, he said something that made me think hard. He wanted to know what I would paint given the choice, what would give me the most pleasure to be expressive in my painting. I’m still thinking about it, and haven’t as yet made my decision about…. as I contemplate my own shadows 🙂