I, The Divine

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Had I known the opening of my New York exhibit would turn out to be a complete fiasco, I would have stayed home. My friend Dina and I reached the gallery at ten minutes to six, breathless. The gallery was empty. One of the assistants was still sweeping the concrete floors. The reception was from six till eight.

I was lucky to have Dina with me. I was a nervous wreck, floating in a rough sea of anxiety. For nineteen years, she had been my anchor. She had taken a week off from her job in Boston to be by my side, flying out to San Francisco to accompany me across a continent to New York.

“Do you need me there?” she had asked over the phone.

“No, I’m fine. It’ll be nice to see you in New York, but you don’t have to come here. I think I can manage. Look, it’s no big deal. We just had another fight. That’s all. He didn’t want to come to the opening. He was surprised I asked. That’s all the fight was about. No biggie. It’s not like he usually shows up at any events.”

“Lovers are supposed to support each other.”

“Well, maybe he’s not my lover.”

“I know that, but do you know that? I’ll be there. I’ll fly to San Francisco and we can come to New York together. I’ll feel better that way.”

And that was that. She arrived in San Francisco to escort me.

I thought the exhibit looked wonderful. My paintings had never looked better, they had breathing space. Even though my best painting was not hung since UPS had damaged it during shipping, the rest of the work was good enough. I was elated.

The gallery had three rooms with three different exhibits. Mine was in the main room. In the smaller gallery there was a group exhibit of New York artists, both paintings and sculptures. In the smallest room was a conceptual exhibit by a Russian émigré.

It was January 19, 1995, and I felt my life might be going somewhere. It did, just not where I expected.

I had not been painting for a long time, but I had reached a style all my own. Having been influenced by what some people called hard-edged abstraction, from Mondrian to McLaughlin, I began painting symmetrical rectangular bars on a plain colored background. The canvases were always large.