The Purple King and The Red Queen.

It's an art series that consists of two paintings. In the first one, the chiefs and the people of a kingdom are gathered to watch a coronation outside the Palace. Outside the main door, before the steps, there's a man dressed in purple attire kneeling in front of a woman in red. The woman is placing a crown -one much smaller than the one on her head- on his head. The people and chiefs seemed divided. While a few amongst cheer, the others just watch.

In the second painting, the man and woman from the first painting are in a bedroom. The man is shirtless. The top of his attire and both their crowns laid at one side of the bed. The man is seated at the edge of the bed with a table in front of him. The woman is kneeling beside the table, holding a plate of food in her hands for the man.

In both paintings, the man and woman's expressions are the same. Their eyes are closed, and there are smiles on their faces.

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I used to think art critics and people who went to art shows were just being pretentious, thinking they were better than we the "uncouth", and being above it all. To some extent, I still do. It's funny to me how someone will make an abstract painting, then proceed to tell everyone that it is a representation of society and how it relates to racism, and feminism, and a whole bunch of social-issue-related words. All I see are a few triangles in a big circle but, yeah, one million dollars seems like a fair price for this.

That idea of art just put me off the whole concept, but I never condemned it, or artists in general. I figured that those that are into it genuinely know why they do it.

I still remember when I started enjoying art. Oluchi, my close friend started showing me paintings she'd done of nature -trees, seas and oceans, mountains, the night sky, sunsets, that kind of thing- from real-life scenes. With every new painting she made and showed me, I would look and think, Wow. I can't imagine that cameras exist that can capture the wonders of creation the way the human eye can. But paintings come close. Oluchi comes close.

She asked me to come with her to one of her favourite art galleries today. That's how I got to meet with this couple -The Purple King and The Red Queen. My eyes were fixed in admiration, and my mind began to wander, till it concentrated on one thing. A word. Beautiful.

Two words joined together to mean "full of beauty". I wonder what the person who invented the word was admiring that inspired such a word. Maybe it was a painting. Maybe he/she was in a gallery. One not too different from this one.

"Jide", Oluchi called to snap me out of my thought process. I turned my attention to her. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing", I said. "The paintings. They're really beautiful"

"Yeah. They really are, aren't they?", she said, then she returned to admiring the painting. I didn't.

It was interesting. There were four floors in that gallery. Each filled with beautiful works of art, and in all that beauty, Oluchi still managed to stand out. Kind of like a sore thumb -the kind you'd pray to have. The word "beautiful" no longer seems enough to describe her, I think. Because Oluchi isn't just full of beauty, she overflows with it. The evidence is abundant in her appearance, her personality… her art.

Could that be what all art is; Part of the overflow of someone's beauty? Or is it just hers?

"One day my paintings will be hanging on this wall too", she said to me.

I smiled, "I'm sure they will"