The Artist Wife
The Artist Wife by Jim Pope
Let me start off by saying my wife is my life partner as we have been married for almost 34 years. She is one-of-a-kind and I can’t imagine my life without her. Now I can start the article.
There is a difference between Artists and Non-Artists, and I hope to shed some light on the differences for you. As a Non-Artist, I learned the color wheel in school as most of us did. It is simple: Red, Green and Blue, all of those colors combine to make the rest, and, as far as I’m concerned, that is all I need to know. This changed after we married and The Artist Wife took over my schooling. One day, I simply set out to paint the one room of the house that is “mine”, my office. I wanted the ceiling to be white and the walls to be green. Discussing this with the Artist Wife sounds something like this. “You mean olive, and you will probably have to ask them to cut the color in half.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? And since when is WHITE not a COLOR? I know that if I go to the Home Depot and ask for white paint, the sales person will give me a can of white paint! They’ve never told me white is not a color! (you can tell they are not artists) To further complicate what I thought was a simple matter, I pulled out a piece of wood containing the green color I wanted to match for my room and The Artist Wife tells me they cannot match “that” color because of the background. WHAT?! Maybe in the olden days, but with computer color matching technology today, I could take a scoop of Napoleon ice cream to the Home Depot and Iknow they could match it perfectly!
Living with an Artist Wife means never getting to pick out a color.
Color, design and fashion are big topics at our house. I am the first to admit I am not the most stylish dresser and my wife likes to remind me of this. I prefer comfortable clothes that take care of themselves. Once,we were watching some award show and “Lady Gaga” shows up wearing an egg and a hat that was the yolk. The Artist Wife commented about what an amazing outfit it was. WHAT?! If I walked into the room wearing gray pants with white (not-a-color) socks, and black shoes, she thinks I am a complete Fashion Mistake. One time, to test her, I purposely put on a pair of blue pants, white socks, black shoes and a red flannel shirt. I thought I looked like I’d be hired at our local carnival to run one of the rides in that outfit, but it seemed “artistic” to me. My Artist Wife comes in the room and asks if her pants and jewelry looked coordinated. My answer was, “Of course they do, and they look fantastic!” knowing that if I said that, she’d change her outfit. She did. And…as she walks out of the room, she looks back and says, “You aren’t wearing that outfit, are you?” I responded, “Lady Gaga wore a yolk on her head and you said that looked good!” She left the room-and then I changed my outfit.
Living with an Artist Wife means you know nothing about fashion.
My Artist Wife likes to paint everything so there are very few unpainted surfaces in our home. As a hobby, I do wood working and have designed and created many custom pieces of furniture for our home. When I am at the lumber yard, I spend extra time going through wood stock to select good pieces with strong grains so I can simply apply a clear coat on the finished piece to showcase the beauty of the wood. One day, I came home to find my wife had taken the wood side table I made and painted it BLACK. I was speechless at the time, but it’s grown on me. Some days I think I should keep moving or I’ll become her next paint project.
Living with an Artist Wife means nothing is safe from her brush.
“Art is in the eye of the beholder” is a true statement. We all see things differently. Living with an Artist Wife is something you have to get used to, but after all these years, I have come to appreciate and understand her unique perspective on things and love who she is and what she does.
If you would like to meet the Artist’s husband, Jim will be accompanying Gisele to the Creative Painting Convention in Las Vegas at the end of February. Stop by and share your stories with him!
Enjoy your Valentine’s Day!
