Oil on canvas 16”x20”

This is a strange and dreamlike painting. I wanted it that way. I painted it loosely, almost surreal, because I was trying to capture a moment when my past and future felt like they were merging.

It shows my now-husband, Michael, and my dog Popeye (now gone) walking laps at Red Mountain Park in Arizona, a place that was a lifeline for me during those months.

At the time, I had three dogs: Popeye, Sammy, and Ruby. I was living alone in a small Arizona apartment, painting almost nonstop, sometimes sixteen hours a day. If I wasn’t at the gym, walking laps in the park, or hanging work in local stores, wine bars, and restaurants, I was in my apartment with a brush in hand. It was a period of major life change, and I was trying to paint my way through it.

During that obsessive stretch, I came up with something I called “time-outs.” (Obviously I didn’t invent them, but I adapted the idea for painting.) Whenever frustration boiled over, I made it a rule that I had to lie on my white faux-leather couch with Popeye stretched out on my chest. He embraced the role completely, earning the title of my “Time-Out Dog.” None of the other dogs could stretch out and lie motionless for a significant period of time like Popeye could. The rule was strict: no computer, no phone, no distractions. I wasn’t allowed to paint again until I felt calm. Sometimes I lay there for hours, awake, just waiting. But it always worked.

Looking back, those time-outs were as much about survival as they were about art. Popeye the Time-Out Dog, kept me grounded when the rest of my life felt uncertain.

Eventually, I realized I needed to step out of that solitude and meet people again. I got a part-time job hostessing at D’vine, a wine bar where I also hung my paintings. It felt perfect…a way to earn a little money, talk to humans again, and maybe sell more art.

On my first day, another hostess, someone I love to this day, showed me the ropes:

“The first thing you do when you get to work is come into the kitchen, grab a cup, fill it with ice, and pick your drink.”

I grabbed a Diet Coke and thought, If this is my first official work task, this is going to be fun.

Then she introduced me to the kitchen crew. That’s when I met Michael. He had just started as the sous chef. My first impression? He looked straight through me with zero interest.

Chefs are always jerks at first, I thought, and made a mental note: I’ll win him over. You’ve got to have the chefs on your side in a busy restaurant.

A few days later, at a staff meeting, he reintroduced himself. This time, he actually looked at me with interest instead of straight through me.

I thought to myself:

“Gotcha.”

A couple days later, we were dating.

Before long, he was walking laps with me in my favorite park alongside Popeye, the Time-Out Dog. Seeing the two of them together felt strangely significant.

One afternoon, as I walked behind them and watched them stroll, an idea occurred to me. My past and my future were moving forward, together. Popeye had carried me through my solitary, obsessive painting days. And Michael was the beginning of a new chapter, the life I was stepping into.

I took a photo that day and later turned it into this painting. It became a way to memorialize the merging of my old life with my new one, my past and future walking side by side.