or: Who Painted these Paintings?
My father died in 1993. My mother in 1997. I have many of the things they acquired as I grew up. I have things that have traveled our history. Things that seem to hold the history. Things that get in the way of my life and yet they are amazingly difficult to toss. Where do you toss history while lives are fading?
But their passing has gone into another stage with me. Personally, inside of myself, I call it decade grief. It is when you are sad because you are not sad anymore. Decade grief.
And to celebrate this stage called decade grief I began tossing things. Some things. Other things, the items that made my eyes happy I have a place for. They do not get in the way of my living. They celebrate life with me as they capture the sunlight as it moves through my home. They help tell me what time it is and give evidence to the earth moving around the sun as the light shifts.
Things. Time. History remembered. History evaporating. And then there are the paintings.
Four of them. The largest called Mountain Stream is the one my dad brought home first. In 1966. I was 14. I remember it as if I were younger. I would guess I was 10 but due to the date on the back of the painting, I was 14. Knowing that my memory is scewed there are the facts.
My father paid $300 for the painting. It is large. My mother was upset that he paid so much for it. I imagine it was about 2.5 times their mortgage payment. And in their conversation about the painting, its apparently surprising arrival, it's price and its possible future locations I heard and remembered some information about the artist.
My father said it was an unusual painting. The artist used a knife to paint. I imagined a switch blade. My father had a shoe box full of switch blade knives. I could see how they might be handy for a sudden urge to paint.
My father said the artist was living in his partners garage because he had no other place to live right now. I recall that my father might have said he was a junkie. I recall that my father and his partner had found this guy to be 'a nice guy' or something redeeming. Apparently not a go to jail sort of junkie but a collect him up and put him in the garage junkie.
I can not exactly remember my dad's partners name. He called him Trig. Trigamome? What was his full name? I am not sure. I do know Trig also raised poodles. I just recently in my remembering put these two things together creating a picture of a man and some poodles living in a garage under one of those many two story houses in San Francisco. Most are very big garages. Some had enough area for a room downstairs, a car, washer and dryer and a small herd of poodles. You could collect an artist into a home like that.
So now that I am in the stage of being sad that I am no longer sad about their deaths I decided to see what these paintings were worth. I look at the signature. It is hard to read.
My father died in 1993. My mother in 1997. I have many of the things they acquired as I grew up. I have things that have traveled our history. Things that seem to hold the history. Things that get in the way of my life and yet they are amazingly difficult to toss. Where do you toss history while lives are fading?
But their passing has gone into another stage with me. Personally, inside of myself, I call it decade grief. It is when you are sad because you are not sad anymore. Decade grief.
And to celebrate this stage called decade grief I began tossing things. Some things. Other things, the items that made my eyes happy I have a place for. They do not get in the way of my living. They celebrate life with me as they capture the sunlight as it moves through my home. They help tell me what time it is and give evidence to the earth moving around the sun as the light shifts.
Things. Time. History remembered. History evaporating. And then there are the paintings.
Four of them. The largest called Mountain Stream is the one my dad brought home first. In 1966. I was 14. I remember it as if I were younger. I would guess I was 10 but due to the date on the back of the painting, I was 14. Knowing that my memory is scewed there are the facts.
My father paid $300 for the painting. It is large. My mother was upset that he paid so much for it. I imagine it was about 2.5 times their mortgage payment. And in their conversation about the painting, its apparently surprising arrival, it's price and its possible future locations I heard and remembered some information about the artist.
My father said it was an unusual painting. The artist used a knife to paint. I imagined a switch blade. My father had a shoe box full of switch blade knives. I could see how they might be handy for a sudden urge to paint.
My father said the artist was living in his partners garage because he had no other place to live right now. I recall that my father might have said he was a junkie. I recall that my father and his partner had found this guy to be 'a nice guy' or something redeeming. Apparently not a go to jail sort of junkie but a collect him up and put him in the garage junkie.
I can not exactly remember my dad's partners name. He called him Trig. Trigamome? What was his full name? I am not sure. I do know Trig also raised poodles. I just recently in my remembering put these two things together creating a picture of a man and some poodles living in a garage under one of those many two story houses in San Francisco. Most are very big garages. Some had enough area for a room downstairs, a car, washer and dryer and a small herd of poodles. You could collect an artist into a home like that.
So now that I am in the stage of being sad that I am no longer sad about their deaths I decided to see what these paintings were worth. I look at the signature. It is hard to read.
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