I have this new painting hanging on the wall of my office. It’s a faded red rowboat, tied off, floating next to the shore. I’m not quite sure what it was about the picture that caught my eye, but something did. A couple months ago, when I was out shopping, looking to get stuff for my new place. I saw it. I liked it. I bought it.

Once I got it home, after everything else had found its place, the little red boat still hadn’t. It was sitting over on the floor, leaning up next to a wall of bookcases. That was when I noticed the significance of the painting. It was as if the little boat on the lake was just as abandoned and adrift in the picture as it now was in my office… in my life. What did an empty rowboat have to do with me?

I looked behind it, at the neat row of bookcases. They were already full, the books already in their place, sitting firmly on the shelves. Every volume had been catalogued when I moved, boxes marked, and placed back in their respective locations in the office I had set up at my new apartment. They weren’t going anywhere; their place was set. I looked around. After a couple weeks of work, everything else was in its place, everything had found its home. Oh sure, I was missing a thing or two, maybe some small stuff you’d expect to lose in a move. But, for the most part, it was all there, everything looked familiar. It all belonged.

The picture of the boat

It wasn’t at home and I began to wonder why.

There was no place on the wall for this wonderful new work of art, seemingly no place in my life for it. Over the next several days, into the following week, I would pick the painting up, and carry it around, kind of positioning it around the place. It didn’t fit. No place seemed to be the right place… for a piece that I had been so drawn to, so attracted to in the little art gallery where I picked it up, I was stumped. Where was this gonna go?

Finally, I decided to move one of my favorites, which was hanging just to the left of my desk. It was an old portrait I call The Lovely Lady.

I loved the Lady, having looked at daily for almost twenty years. What can I say, at some point in time, she had caught my eye too? Still, I ended up moving her over behind my reading chair. Yeah, she looked good, but so what? Besides, how many years did I need to look at the same portrait? I figured she would look just as good, if not better, behind me.

I sat down, holding the framed canvas of the boat, looked to my left, and wondered if it would fit there. Could it replace where The Lovely Lady had been? I sat thinking, kind of leaning back and then leaning forward in my chair, holding the painting. At last, I got up, and placed it in the new empty spot on the wall. Standing there, it seemed that it would. I went and got the hammer and a nail, hung the frame, straightened it a bit, and sat down. I swiveled my chair, looking towards the painting.

In less than a minute, maybe thirty seconds, it was settled. I knew the little boat was in the right place.

Except, it fit in an odd sort of way. The Lovely Lady, who had always been directly in my line of sight, was now gone. I was now looking at an empty boat, bobbing atop the waves, waiting for its next journey.

The other portrait? I thought about her once and again. I caught a glance of her out of the corner of my eye on the way out to get the mail the other day. I still liked her but wasn’t fixated on her anymore. After all, I had looked at her for close to two decades. I’d seen her already. I’d go so far to say that I studied her. In the end, she wasn’t going anywhere. She’ll always be a pretty lady, but she’s there, trapped under glass, looking out at the world that may or may not notice her at all.

The rowboat? It’s textured paint on live canvas. The painting has a livelihood to it, a feeling of urgent desire, a notion of adventure, of waiting to find something, just beyond the far shore of the lake. The red paint stands out against the grey water, begging to be noticed, needing to remain afloat, yearning to float away. The painting is one of quiet beauty. The mist above the water holds a multitude of visions, waiting to be discovered.

That’s why I had been drawn to it. It all had to do with the journey that is yet to come. The little boat? In time, it will find a way across the lake. From the day I saw the boat, I must have recognized its potential, of where it was going, what it was capable of. Now, I understood why it caught my eye.

But then, more especially, I understood how unimportant The Lovely Lady had become. Apart from being pretty, she only collected dust on the glass that kept her, she remained unchanged, always the same, transfixed in place.  

The faded red rowboat? It’s alive, ready for an incredible journey. I suppose I am too.

~J.S.

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