Is comparing me with Pablo Picasso the best you can do sir?

The reason why I stopped doing art shows was because I was tired of being in awkward situations and listen to all kinds of analyses about myself from friends and strange people from far away whom faces I have never seen before. I have reached my limited point at this collective show in Rockland, MA when, looking at the decor of my studio, I heard a person saying: how crazy can these artists be, what else can they invent? I don’t know why but I felt a little hurt and promised to stop exposing myself to the world like that.

At this same event, a small group was browsing around but this gentleman highlighted. He was going back and forth with his hands on his back for more time than necessary to look at a piece of art; his steps were carefully pursuing something in every image he was looking at. He was immersed in a trance broken only by a murmuring sound here and there and the silence of his shoes when he stayed still for never ending minutes, then, he walked slowly towards me and with squinting eyes, applied an even bigger degree of examination and said, “See, you look like Pablo Picasso.”

I could not believe my years. After all that pompous parade that was the best he could come up with? Not wanting to engage in all of that jazz, I gave a half smile and said yes, you are right, if you say so. He then, for my surprise, attacked. What? You didn’t like it? Don’t you think it is an honor to have someone with my knowledge telling you that? Have you heard about a most remarkable painter than Pablo Picasso?

Attracted by the whimsical of the situation the others visitors gathered around us with funny expressions on their amused faces.

“It is an honor to be compared to him. I am greatly flattered. There is no doubt about the fact that he was an amazing painter, but, he is dead now, he completed his journey. How about me? These are my art work, my views; my poetry and the traces of my hands, did you have a glance at my person there as well sir?”

Like a challenged warrior, he looked at me with an air of superiority, puffed out his chest, crossed his hands on his back and went on in another odyssey of examination with that same murmuring noise when stopping here and there using his x-rays eyes like a scrutiny machine looking for me in every line I dared to lay on the canvas. After some time, he stopped in a reverent way and said: Yes madam artist, I can see you very well revealed on your paintings, look like all your lines are shouting who you are, I can see and I can describe what I can see if you want me to.

People now were gathering around us with pronounced curiosity; being afraid of becoming a spectacle myself, more that I already have been, and pretending I have to go somewhere else at that exactly moment, I politely thanked and told him that I was amazed to discover that I was now and on, sharing my deep secrets with an unknown gentleman from far away, then I left the scene to give then the chance to scatter. That was the last time I participate in an art show.

People now were gathering around us with pronounced curiosity; being afraid of becoming a spectacle myself, more that I have been, and pretending I have to go somewhere else at that exactly moment, I politely thanked and told him that I was amazed to discover that I am now on sharing my deep secrets with a gentleman from far away, then I left the scene to give then the chance to scatter. That was the last time I participate in an art show.