12/21/06
I unpacked pictures today - Chinese watercolors and nineteenth century Japanese block prints by the masters (Kunichika, Utamaro, Toyokuni) - works that have been entrusted to me for safekeeping until I hand them down to the next generations of guardians.
My father’s art – a Brueghel influenced oil that he created at the age of fifteen, the portrait of his mother’s dog, the clown he was painting in college when he met my mother. His paintings from North Carolina in the late forties, his Ohio paintings through the fifties, his more recent works from California - I remember watching him give birth to many of them. They all have a special meaning to me.
I put his lesser works into an estate sale. They went for twenty-five to fifty dollars each. My series of student caliber block prints sold for thirty-five a piece. I find it amazing that his talent and my lack thereof would bring similar prices.
I unwrapped my mother’s portrait of my brother who died in December of 1975. I remembered his laugh and the time we spent talking. I remembered her sadness at the loss.
But all of these things are parts of previous chapters in my life. They will not be remembered when I am gone. My father’s books will never be published. His art, overshadowed by the commercial flamboyancy of marketing moguls, hacks who gave us technique without substance, and innovation without meaning, will probably end up as a roof patch on a chicken coop.
And so it is as the ghosts of the departed fade gradually from existence – bit by bit until those who carry the memories are gone as well.
