Nedko Solakov

Waiting for Her, 1978

oil on canvas
size of painting: 65 х 100 cm
size of work: 134 x 390 cm

A lot of waiting around happened on that terrace at Sofia Airport, now Terminal 1. The terrace for meeting and sending off our jet-setting relatives is long gone, but even longer before that my ex-wife and I briefly got married and then divorced a year later. We had been dating since our days at the Math High School in Gabrovo, after that we more or less kept our relationship going during our first year of university in Sofia (she studied Textile Engineering at MEI, I studied Mural Painting at the Art Academy). But after she went to study the same thing in Czechoslovakia, our love flared up because of the distance between us, and so it went for several years. We wrote letters to each other on a regular basis, which all ended with "You know ..." ("... I love you" was the unwritten sequel). I put mine in the mailboxes on the trams. It seems that this sweet service has long since disappeared. Well, here I am on the terrace, obviously it's winter or some inbetween season, it's cold. I'm dressed in a Mongolian Darhan coat (my lovely Bulgarian coat was stolen during the December 8 Students’ Holiday celebration in my first year at the Academy); I have a special scarf knitted by my future wife to flutter around and a neat cap bought in Prague on one of my trips to my beloved lassie (who was very sexy, so “lassie” is not a very appropriate term). And a bouquet, of course. And some tricks in the composition of the picture – just look how finely drawn the control tower is. And the sky is pretty gloomy. I could speculate that this comes from socialist oppression, but I won't because it's simply not true.