Nancy Tabor was the love of my life,

or so I thought when I turned 20 and she held my hand even though I'd been a schmuck about the whole birthday thing and she'd worked so hard to throw me a party. I loved that girl with all my heart, and thought I'd end up marrying her as soon as we'd gotten out of school.

She was the 2nd woman I'd slept with and the only one I'd been able to share so much with. Of course, being an artist, it was important to me to place her in my art, just as she was placed in my heart.

I painted her portrait from a photograph of her sitting next to a yellow fire hydrant in front of the Communications Building at UC Santa Cruz. but I was intimidated and, in that 9 hour final spree to complete the paining, I did not complete her face.

And so I never finished the painting, and some time passed, and Nancy shipped off to Italy for a semester in Sienna. She broke up with me over the phone, so very long distance, in the middle of the night pacific time.

I was a mess. My emotional outbursts over the event ruined several good friendships.

But I kept the canvas. I always kept the canvas. I think I always hoped that Nancy and I would always be friends one day, and somehow the canvas was a representation of that. And I tried to complete it, but I could never get where I wanted with her face.

That isn't to say I didn't take out my frustration on the picture. At one point I removed Nancy entirely and replaced her with this hottie brunette with killer black and silver short cowboy boots. But ultimately it didn't work and I shoved it to the back of the garage again.

Later I decided I wanted to use the canvas for something else, and I gessoed over every inch, only to regret it later. I spent several weeks sanding the gesso off (and the hottie brunette) to get enough of the original to work with. And I did work with it, and it was so much better.



But recently I'd gotten back in touch with Nancy, talked to her and she'd even talked to my kids and my wife, and that hope that we'd be friends felt so strong. But that wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want to meet for coffee or lunch or talk on the phone. While I offered and shared bits of my life and family with her, she shared nothing with me, and flat out refused to. I'm not sure why she talked to me in the first place, why she ever returned my first calls just to turn around and deny any thought of friendship.

So I had to let go. I had no choice. There's no way to convince someone to be your friend, that you're worth meeting for coffee, and so the rejection was absolute, final.

So, today, here I am with this albatross of a canvas I've been carrying around for 20 years, and I'm done. It is good-bye Nancy, and the frame will go toward some new use with a new canvas.



A simple Utility knife is all that was necessary. Nothing special, nothing fancy. No ritual, no rememberance. Just a simple cut.



Looking almost like a small chalk like, but so much deeper. Then more cuts, diagonally across the image. I was careful, though. I couldn't bear the bad luck of cutting through either Nancy's face or the face of the fire hydrant. This was not an act of anger or aggression. Just one of finality.



And here I am still trying to find the art in the piece after I'm all done. The pieces arranged around the frame in opposition to their normal relationship. Almost like flags or tongues of flame, dancing around the wood I'd cobbled together so long ago.



Or this brief animation of the stack of pieces diminishing rapidly.



Ultimately they were to end up here in my trash bin.



Like all good intentions, it has wandered. My daughter has retrieved it from the bin to stash with her treasures, god knows why.

I thought about hanging the frame as a memento, but realized that's what got me into this to begn with, so it is hidden among my canvases, waiting to be draped and painted anew.



Good-bye Nancy. I wish you a long and happy life. You missed out sharing mine.