PART FOUR~Number Seven:

I had lived too long without love.

And so, in order to be whole, I made a pact with myself:

Before Beauty, Art sufficed.


Up to this day, my creativity, my Art, had suffered from an absence of heart. With the Work behind me, I’d enter into full relationship with the world. I wanted a partner, a companion. I needed a woman in my life; in my arms, and in my bed.


I was half-consumed with madness. There was a sadness, a disconnect, and an expunging of the past, showing itself within each and every painting. The walls were crying out to me; a pile of sketches; a stacked ordering of canvases, giving validation to the singular life I’d carried within myself, and the world.

The canvases carried a shadowy presence; a presence I didn’t take note of the first time ‘round. Long after the paint had dried, the traces were still there.