Rose-Colored Glasses

When I started this painting (Rose-Colored Glasses, oil on canvas, 54" x 72"), it was intended to be a "processing" piece - a painting used to define and reflect on something personal...usually a difficult past situation that I didn’t handle very well. (And, oh my, there are many. Maybe that should be my next show; “Paintings Needed to Process the Stupid things I have done.”) Rose was meant to explore that surreal time after a marriage dissolves and dating begins. Having been away from the dating game for so long, I was curious (and honestly, distressed) about how a person could seem one way at the beginning of a relationship and seem entirely different at the end of the relationship. Our society uses the idiom "seeing through rose-colored glasses" to explain this phenomenon. Definition: "With an unduly cheerful, optimistic, or favorable view of things." So, I picked one of my personal pictures; from a vacation to Vancouver (um, where this particular relationship concluded), cut out the person who was in the picture and colored the sea red. I absolutely swear I wasn’t trying to be nasty or bitter...and honestly, was surprised at people when they suggested I was. I was just “processing.” (yeah, yeah...tomato, tomahto.)

So, as I worked on this painting, I waited for an epiphany about where I went wrong and how I might do better in the future; how I might be able to avoid the pitfall of those rose colored glasses.

The self-realization came...a little different than I expected, however. First, I finally realized the negative tone I was adopting with all of this “processing” (thick-headed, I know) and started looking for the positive. Which, in turn, made me start asking myself, “What’s so wrong with rose-colored glasses? Why shouldn’t I wear them ALL the time? Wouldn't the world be – or at least seem like - a better place if I did?” It might seem kind of Pollyanna of me, but I have made a conscious decision to wear rose-colored glasses 24/7 (metaphorically, of course....I would look silly otherwise).