What would your painting look like?

"I've caught this magical landscape and it's the enchantment of it that I'm so keen to render. Of course lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal, but that's just too bad." –Claude Monet

I found myself in a unique predicament five weeks ago.

“So what do you want me to paint for you?” asked one of my best girlfriends, Stephanie Galeotti. I finished touring her newly-built home in Savannah, Ga., and had commented on the abstract art she had painted and hanging in almost every room.

I stammered for a few minutes, hoping to contemplate a little longer because this wasn’t an everyday type of inquiry. Then, in an instant, the ideas flowed like a dam had been removed from a reservoir.


“How about a painting with a barn, rolling green hills, sunflowers and lots of blue and yellow colors? And off in the sky, almost as if the barn were dreaming, you add a cityscape sitting in the clouds?” I asked of Stephanie.

The idea behind the painting? It’s city girl meets country boy. Merlot mixes with Budweiser. Alisha meets Richard. You get the idea. I’m from Raleigh, and though it’s not quite metro New York, it is a big city in comparison to Lawndale, N.C., where Richard grew up. I don’t think there's a single stoplight in the Lawndale city limits.

Plus, I wanted something that represented the marriage to my best friend, and what better way to meld our different backgrounds together than to show a barn and a city? It's our own little version of "Green Acres."

In less than a week’s time, Stephanie finished our painting (pictured above). When I first saw it, I was so thrilled. She had captured, in the coolest of abstract ways, the true essence of Richard and me. We finally got to hang it in our kitchen this past weekend.

This whole experience got me thinking. What if a talented artist, much like my friend, were to offer a painting for you and your significant other? What symbols would you suggest, how would you illustrate your relationship, what colors should be used?

It’d be awesome if readers could post their own illustrations. Since that's an unlikely option with blogger.com, how about sharing your ideas for your own "relationship painting"?