Tuesday, February 07, 2023

The Artist

So I am going to tell you a story, or at least try. It’s about a little girl and her Dad. As the youngest of six children spread over 22 years and two Moms, she grew up seeing and having to deal with pretty much everything that had come before, for better and for worse.

And that was a lot. Two older sisters and three older brothers from two marriages and two divorces; different houses with different habits; lots of complicated family history; and lots of books. Everywhere there were books.

Her parents were both writers; one of her siblings a journalist; two others published books or papers.

Everybody else in the family already had a voice, it seemed. She was the baby who would have to find her own way through this family maze. She’d have to be different. She grew up spending roughly 60 percent of her average week at her Mom’s house and 40 percent at her Dad’s. 

She could write as well as the rest if them but her true joy came from a different direction — making pictures. By the time she was a teenager, everybody recognized that and went away briefly to a boarding school for young artists.

During this time, quite naturally, she grew apart from her Dad. They didn’t talk all that often.

But all the while he saw and admired what she was doing. 

Everything moves in cycles and eventually the two of them found their way back to one another. What connected them, in the end, was the realization that they shared at least two things — an inner anger at social injustices and a shared obsession for the beauty of colors, patterns and details that can be expressed through art.

Especially her art.

That’s as far as the story goes, for now. Today that young woman is a painter who works in a local gallery.

And I am her Dad.

Latest piece for the “Sky” show.

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