The heart is a muscle and a pump. It has as much resemblance to a Valentine’s Day card as the person you love does to a chalk outline.

Valentine’s Day takes my favorite of all human experiences – love and human connection – and turns it into marketing whack-a-mole. Heart-shaped everything. Anthropomorphic stuffed toys with plastic pleading eyes. Sparkly diamonds that look like ice. Guilt roses. Itchy lingerie. Shellfish. Not to mention last year’s wily-timed movie opening of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

There is no human experience that cannot be memed, commoditized, and profiteered. If you’re single, divorced, widowed, or in a relationship that has all the plot points of a zombie movie, Valentine’s Day is like death by a thousand ads.

I’m not a cynic about love. I’ve made the biggest sacrifices of my life for love. My life is full of hard-won still-working love. However, the voids of love lost remain and for some reason, those voids stay void because experience doesn’t overwrite old love like data overwrites some freed-up sector on a hard drive. Thank God or evolution or intelligent design for that.

This is a valentine to Valentine’s Day and a reminder that there is no simple experience.

 
$625
Acrylic on canvas, 14″ x 11″
Located at: Studio