A Husband and Wife Who Do Not Want to Be in the Painting

I Want Out of This Painting ASAP 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16"

This month I painted portraits of the married couple who do not wish to be immortalized in a painting. Neither of us look like the obvious limitations of my rendering. One of us is wearing a bib.

Rose Did Not Want To Be In This Painting 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20"

Long term togetherness can become smother love. One of my hobbies is breaking apart the bonds that break. Fortunately, I still hope every Spring like in this poem I wrote 25 Aprils ago:

I Think You Are in Cahoots With the Dove

My love in paradise
the white-tipped blackbird
sings sunrise to all other weak things
like your innocence
Yeah!
And doves coo-coo with the malice of a pillow
and fly off without harming anyone I think...
The night cat Tuxedo
waits by the door smelling you
(The door opens shyly and says “Hi”)

The things that come and go in this world
are so fast and usually very mean
or at best bewildered enough to kill an awful
lot of things
that I will not endeavor ever
a peace which cannot stay put like us

We are not faltering blindly through this life
What magic’s left encircles thee
always in the play of cats and birds
It is our determined gentle hands that matter
For even in the slowest walking hum-drum world
the pink and red rain flowers
cannot easily hide their urge
to burst
stinky joys like April