It is a scary, scary thing to plunk down any significant amount of money, but it’s scarier still when you’re spending it on something as ostensibly "impractical" as art. It’s not like buying a house, or a car, or splurging on a luxurious bed; art doesn’t shelter you from the elements, or get you where you need to go, or make it easier for you to get a good night’s rest. It doesn’t do much of anything really; it has no function, no utility, no practical reason for taking up the space it takes. We hemmed and hawed, mulling over the pros and cons of whether we would be spending frivolously. The paintings were expensive, they were huge, they would really look much better in the sort of a grand, spacious loft that we would probably never be able to afford. With the same amount of money, we could buy the long-coveted real sofa to replace the hand-me-down futon we’d been complaining about for three years now.

But what it comes down to is that in the end love, alas, is not rational. A good sofa we could find anywhere, anytime, but the perfect painting is a much more elusive find. We looked at each other, and knew we’d be returning the next day, checkbook in hand.

A painting may not be as functional as a sofa, but in this house at least, it delivers just as much satisfaction. These days, I’m still sitting on a lumpy, bumpy, sore-back-inducing old futon sofa when I watch TV. But when my sweetie and I are in the kitchen each evening, sharing dinner, we look up at our fabulous, marvelous one-of-a-kind pair of paintings, and can’t help but grin.