© Anne Zelenka
An art and essay series by Anne Zelenka
What do we gain from the people we love?
Things Men Gave Me is an ongoing creative project that pairs original abstract acrylic paintings with personal essays drawn from a series of post-divorce relationships I’ve experienced over the past 13 years.
Each essay centers on a man and a gift he gave me, some literal, some symbolic: a ring, a cruise to Alaska, an introduction to the challenges of online dating. In return, I took something deeper: insight, closure, freedom, or sometimes the hard-earned clarity that only arrives in hindsight.
Written in the intimate, emotionally intelligent style of the New York Times “Modern Love” column, these essays explore the messy, magical, often contradictory terrain of midlife intimacy. The stories are personal, but the themes—reinvention, longing, power, selfhood—will resonate with anyone who’s ever tried to begin again.
Every painting in the series is directly inspired by its paired essay. These are not illustrations, but visual companions. They are gestural, abstract responses to emotional truths. Together, the words and images form a layered conversation about desire, autonomy, and the beauty of becoming.
A sneak peek from the essay A Tiffany aquamarine ring:
We took the gondola up at dusk. Below us, the snow turned lavender in the fading light, and Steamboat Springs glowed like a galaxy on the valley floor.
Elijah led me onto the mountaintop deck, where no one else had stepped into the cold. Snowflakes sparkled in the light spilling from the bar behind us. He pulled a small black velvet box from his ski jacket pocket, opened it, and showed me the ring, with its cushion-cut aquamarine gem, surrounded by a halo of tiny diamonds.
This is it, I thought. This is where I’m okay again.
He didn’t get on one knee. He just said, “I love you. I hope we’ll be together forever.”
Wind whistled across the slopes.
I tried to smile.
This scene opens one of the essays in the collection, a story about a ring that each of us thought meant redemption, but in different and incompatible ways. The painting I Wanted That Ring, shown above, is its visual counterpart.
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