I had been working as a para-legal secretary for some years, but it wasn't what was in my heart. I always knew where my passions lay - in the art world. But it wasn't until that balmy August day in the gallery as I was taking a break and admiring some of the paintings while strolling through the corridors lined with canvases, that I met him, and my life took a turn that it would never come back from.
I was standing in front of an impressionist painting by James Stanley - one of New York's finest up-and-coming artists - and was admiring the way his brushstrokes seemed to flow effortlessly into one another, when I felt or sensed someone standing just behind me to my right. I payed the person no mind, but a subtle waft of expensive musky cologne breezed past me. I had to admit, it kind of added to the overall feeling I was having while viewing the seascape painting. I took another bite of my chocolate bar and just mused over what the artist was exactly trying to express.
My grandmother had been the one to first interest me in art, often taking me around galleries as a child, until I could see almost any work of art and say who the artist was. She had also been a frustrated artist, and I guess I had become one also. There had never really been much of a chance for me to pursue my creative urges, the families finances didn't allow for it; and since Dad had died, there had been no main breadwinner in our family. The death of my father resulted in so many expenses, that my college fund had been soon drained. So I had put away my brushes by the age of eighteen, and then sought work to help my mother and younger sister out. There was no other way.
Each time I came to the gallery across from my work, I felt like I was transported back to my youth. A time when I was much happier, and much slimmer. I had put on weight, but to be honest, I didn't care. After all, the artist Peter Paul Rubens only painted curvy women, seeing them as the most beautiful of all women; it was even where the word 'rubenesque' came from, meaning a curvacious and sensual woman. I was certainly curvacious, and I really didn't give a damn if my mother constantly told me I needed to lose weight if I ever wanted to get a man. I'd seen the way some men looked at my shapely body, and I knew the right man for me would love me exactly as I was.
But that wasn't what I was thinking about as I stared at the painting. I was wondering why the artist had chose to use burnt sienna to suggest something looming under the sea, a kind of brooding presence in a literal sea of tranquility, contrasted also by the waves breaking on the rocks.
“What do you think about it?” A deep masculine voice said from behind me.
I didn't turn around, I was still deep in thought and answered absentmindedly,
“I think... I feel the piece captures the artists' romantic concept of the sea, the freedom and the depth, but the way he's painted the waves crashing up against the rocks expresses the potential brutality of the ocean. It's one of his better pieces.”
“Really?” The man's voice questioned, “You know this artist?”
I shrugged,
“Everyone knows James Stanley.” I responded, without turning around to him.
But everyone didn't know James Stanley, it was just I kept abreast of all the developments in the art world, and then I felt as if I'd been a bit rude, so I turned to face the man, and my jaw dropped!
There, standing in front of me, was a man who an artists brush existed to paint. He must have been around six foot two, his gray - obviously tailor made suit - wrapped around his well-built frame like a glove. But his eyes were what I had noticed first. There was an effervescent sparkle in them, and he took his intense gaze away from the painting we'd both been studying, and looked down at me, a warm smile slightly appearing on his face. I had an instant irrational desire to throw away my chocolate bar, feeling it was somehow 'not the done thing' to eat it around such a man, then decided such thinking was ridiculous at best.
I straightened my business suit and wondered if my top was slightly too low cut,
“Sorry.” I blurted out.
He cocked his head slightly to the side,
“Sorry for what?”
“I mean, I'm sorry for assuming you should know who James Stanley is. It's just, well, I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to art.”
I instantly felt stupid for saying so, I wasn't a nerd and had never thought of myself as such, so why had I even said that? I didn't know, I just felt so self-conscious looking up at him. He looked like a Greek statue with the bearing of Michael Angelo's David, and the dignified brow and cleft chin of Roman sculpture.
“It's quite okay, I just wish I knew as much about art as you, I just don't have time what with running my own business, but it's always been a fascination of mine.”