Who Was the Green Lady and Why Is She Near Impossible To Live With?

Call it Struggles in Decorating or True Imagined Crimes because this portrait carries a bit of baggage.

The Green Lady is an unusual oil portrait that I’ve had in my collection since the late 90s. I picked her up at a flea market in Madrid, mesmerized by her troubled expression and color. Or maybe I was troubled by her expression and color, I can’t remember which, but it was one of the two. She is signed by an artist called Pizarro.

You can’t help but have strong feelings about her. She is an enigma. A heavy-hearted, caloussed workhorse. A woman who holds the keys to a house that she alone must clean. A woman who’s tended the sick when necessary, providing a warm broth and a lingering side order of gloom.

A woman whose lifetime of service, a reliable if resentful dedication, is rewarded with a portrait done in oils to show how much she is loved, appreciated. Or perhaps she commissioned the piece herself, sitting for the artist between peeling potatoes and scrubbing the baseboards.

There is a sourness to her, the spoiling of her ghastly skin tone. The green of stale air and forgotten birthdays. This is the color of an old grudge. The Sea Hag pallor of motion sickness and food poisoning, the horrible green of all those things, but not the green of a beloved auntie or even headmistress--can such a thing even exist? That’s something that just can’t be.

Who is this woman with fresh red lipstick on skin that looks to have turned?

For years I’ve found only temporary places to display this painting before she wears out her welcome. Glaring disapprovingly from wherever I might put her, but this week I finally struck on the ideal location for her and it’s holding up.

It turns out that I did not need a Punishment Room or dungeon to hang the painting in at all because the small downstairs bathroom turns out to be the ideal spot for this tricky piece.

Remarkably, this bathroom is already painted a technicolor vomit green and was a part of a ‘jungle’ theme that has long since been dismantled. The walls a shade that turns out to be a startlingly complimentary color to the skin tone of the Green Lady, making her come alive and just radiate--it gives the old dishwater a rejuvenating burst of freshness! She actually seems happier! Breathing the right oxygen, blending in with her surroundings. Relaxing.

A loo. A domain. A decorating problem solved!

Thanks for stopping by, Guys!