"Empty Chairs and Empty Tables", 9x12, oil, paintings of interiors, candlelight, Buckley's Tavern, Maryanne Jacobsen art, Bombay cat, Les Miserables, loneliness , isolation, grief, black cats

"Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, 9x12, oil on linen

A few years ago I had a lovely birthday dinner at Buckley's Tavern, in Centerville Delaware. I was up north for the annual Brandywine Plein Air festival, which always happens to fall on my birthday week.

By the time our meal had ended, it was late and the guests were pretty much all leaving for the night. I loved the warm firelight  that exuded warmth and old world charm into the formal dining room, so I snapped a couple of photographs for future artistic reference.

Last week I was feeling rather morose- our lovely  Bombay rescue kitty Sebastian was diagnosed with liver and kidney disease and the prognosis was bleak. I found myself crying inconsolably and feeling isolated  and alone with my sadness since my husband is unable to ever feel quite as deeply as I do. It's not his fault. I am an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), and thus everything I feel is magnified tremendously compared to the emotions of a non-HSP. So my husband has never been able to identify with the sometimes unbearable levels of sensitivity that I feel in almost all situations.

It's tough being an HSP, but as the years have gone by I have managed to understand myself better and know that I am this way along with many many other sensitive individuals who are overcome by feelings that affect most people to a much lesser extent.

Anyhow, I decided to translate my feelings to paint and added the lonely figure in the back of the restaurant to the painting. Maybe I was trying to transfer my feelings of sadness and loneliness to the canvas in order to alleviate my own pain. I don't know. As I painted I played the soundtrack from Les Miserables, since the sad song, "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables", seemed to fit the theme.

I'll be returning to the Brandywine valley again this October and will probably celebrate another birthday dinner at Buckley's. I hope by then that these feelings will have subsided as a result of knowing that Sebastian is either well again, or that he is in a much better place- a place where spirits can soar free of the burdens of these earthly bodies of ours.

I hope this post is not depressing. I don't want it to be. I celebrate the wonderful life that we have given Sebastian and the joy that he has given us, and I know that as in all sad times- it too will pass.