The Mess Is the Romance: What Contemporary Romanticism Means to Me

There is a greasy plate sitting on the table beside me right now. Bacon grease, actually. My mimosa glass is empty, and my husband just walked past and put his hand on the small of my back—the kind of touch that lasts maybe two seconds and somehow says an entire paragraph.

Somewhere in the other room, our four-year-old grandchild is laughing. Not politely giggling. Really laughing.

There are dishes to deal with, crumbs on the table, things out of place, and I'm sure if I looked around hard enough I could find seventeen other things that need doing.

And I keep thinking: This mess is Contemporary Romanticism.

Not the cleaned-up version. Not the table after the dishes are put away, the flowers are arranged and the light is perfect. This version. The greasy plate, the empty glass, his hand on my back and that little laugh coming from the other room.

I Think I've Spent a Lot of My Life Waiting for the Beautiful Part

Maybe you have too.

We tell ourselves we'll enjoy the house when it's clean, relax when the work is finished, invite people over when everything is ready, or make time for ourselves once everyone else has what they need.

We'll appreciate the garden when the weeds are pulled. We'll enjoy this season when life settles down a little.

Except life doesn't seem particularly interested in settling down.

And if beauty requires perfect conditions, we're going to miss an awful lot of it.

I'm beginning to think the romance was never waiting on the other side of the mess. It was tangled up inside it.

That's What Contemporary Romanticism Has Become for Me

I paint flowers. I love beautiful things. I love dramatic color, wonderful light and paintings that make you want to move closer.

But when I say my work is Contemporary Romanticism, I'm not saying I want to make life look prettier than it really is. In some ways, I mean almost the opposite.

I want to get better at seeing what is already beautiful while real life is still happening around it.

The wet towels on the floor aren't beautiful because wet towels are particularly inspiring. They're beautiful because the grandchildren were in the pool.

The coffee cup left on my desk isn't beautiful because I have a deep emotional attachment to dirty dishes. It's beautiful because I sat there that morning, warm cup in my hands, and had a few quiet minutes before the day began asking things of me.

A fading flower isn't beautiful because it's perfect. Sometimes it becomes more beautiful because we understand it isn't going to be here much longer.

And the plate in front of me this morning isn't beautiful because bacon grease has suddenly become fine art. It's what surrounds it that matters.

It's evidence that people were here.

We ate. We talked. Someone poured a mimosa. A little person laughed. The man I love walked by and touched my back without thinking twice about it.

That's a life.

Maybe Romance Has Gotten a Little Too Polished

When we hear the word romantic, it's easy to picture candlelight, beautiful dresses, bouquets and weekends somewhere lovely.

I like all of those things. Very much.

But that's not the kind of romance I'm most interested in anymore.

Romance can be making coffee for someone because you know exactly how they take it. It can be a husband reaching for his wife's back as he passes behind her chair. It can be grandchildren making your house considerably louder and considerably messier.

It can be tomatoes ripening on the counter, laundry that belongs to people you love, paint on your pajamas, a dog lying inconveniently across the doorway, or flowers brought inside from the garden with bugs still hiding in them.

Maybe romanticizing your life isn't pretending everything is lovely.

Maybe it's refusing to believe that only the lovely-looking parts matter.

I Want to Paint That -

Not necessarily the bacon plate—although now that I've said it, I probably should.

What I want my paintings to hold is that feeling: the richness, imperfection, color and tenderness hiding inside completely ordinary days.

I want to make paintings that cause someone to stop for an extra second because something in them recognizes something in the painting.

Maybe it's joy. Maybe longing. Memory. Grief. Maybe they can't name it at all.

They just feel it.

That's the part of traditional Romanticism I keep coming back to. Art wasn't merely supposed to record what something looked like. It was allowed to care about what it felt like.

And I want that permission in contemporary life too.

I don't need a storm crashing against a cliff to experience something worth noticing. Sometimes I have pink dahlias. Sometimes I have sunlight crossing the kitchen counter. Sometimes I have a grandchild laughing in the next room.

And sometimes I have all of it happening while there's a greasy plate sitting right in front of me.

So This Is My Definition:

Contemporary Romanticism, to me, is the practice of noticing the emotional weight and beauty inside an ordinary life. Not after we've cleaned it up. Not once everything has been resolved.

But while we're in it.

It is beauty with fingerprints on it. Joy with dishes in the sink. Love that doesn't stop to pose for the photograph.

It is flowers that eventually wilt, people who grow older, children who grow up and moments that disappear almost before we realize they were moments.

Maybe that's why noticing matters so much to me.

Because the ordinary things aren't actually ordinary for very long.

One day the four-year-old laughing in the other room won't be four. One day I would give anything to hear that exact laugh coming from that exact room again.

One day an empty glass and a greasy breakfast plate might feel less like a mess and more like evidence of a morning I wish I could revisit.

So today, I'm trying not to rush past it. The table can wait another minute.

I'm going to sit here and listen.

Because the plate, the empty glass, his hand on my back and the laughter coming from the other room—

that's the beautiful part.

And I don't want to miss it.