“One Plate, Two Forks” (24” x 24”)
My fingers are cramped, my shoulders may well be permanently hunched and my brain is fried from the most tedious painting I’ve done in a long, LONG time. Do you feel sorry for me? Ahhhh, don’t. I was still having fun because I love painting. But really — this is probably the last photorealistic painting I’ll ever paint, so I pulled out all the stops. And this was my Christmas gift to my wife Joy, so…it had to be the best I had in me.
This painting, “One Plate, Two Forks”, is based on some photos I randomly decided to take on an early summer afternoon several years ago, when Joy and I first moved to Asheville, North Carolina. I had not yet started an art studio so technically my “art career” had not even begun. Joy and I were exploring downtown Asheville and we were both getting tired of walking. We mutually decided we needed coffee and maybe a snack, and so…we walked back to the car and drove up to the Grove Park Inn. This place has a “Vintage National Park Lodge” look to it, with huge stone fireplaces in the cavernous lobby (you seriously could fit a medium sized tree in one of the hearths!). Anyway we made our way out to the terrace restaurant overlooking downtown Asheville and the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains. It was really a perfect afternoon.
My understanding was that we were going to get coffee and cherry cheesecake (we’d heard it was amazing). Let me clarify that expectation: My understanding was that we would both get our own cheesecake and our own coffee. But then, after we sat down and looked at the menu, Joy announced that just a coffee was fine with her…(long pause)…”I’ll just have a couple bites of your cheesecake if that’s okay”.
If that’s okay.
I’m no idiot. That statement is code for “I’m going to devour half your piece of cheesecake Steve”. After emotionally recovering and readjusting to the new, truly sad direction this conversation was going in, I agreed.
“One plate, two forks, please.”
That really describes our whole marriage I think. It’s all about sharing. I hate sharing. But it’s so, so good for me to do. She’s willingly shared really horrible and frightening experiences with me and she’s shared really awesome, adventurous and fun experiences with me. This piece of amazing cheesecake was just a good object lesson. There was our life on a plate…shared.
…that question is code for “I’m going to devour half
your piece of cheesecake Steve”.
You definitely do give up something (sometimes a WHOLE lot) when you share yourself, your grief, your joys, your experiences, your time, your cheesecake with other people. But I have found (I’m donning my philosophers hat right now) that you really do gain more than you loose if you share from a willing heart. And it’s different than just passively letting someone TAKE something from you. That’s not sharing, though I have sometimes confused it for sharing. It feels like that’s an expression of weakness, and can lead to resentment of the one who “took”. I think sharing something assumes you're willing to sacrifice for the sake of another because you love them. That, I think, is an expression of strength, not weakness. Love costs something.
So as a matter of fact, “Yes. You may even have half my beloved cheesecake. Let me just draw a line down the middle so it’s fair…”
