Letting go of Vincent VanGogh.

In December and January it's very cold in upstate New York and it came as no small surprise to me that,

just as I would need them, the discovery of "magic markers" would provide me a way to continue on.

The show material was ready, as was I, but no longer could I work in the frigid garage set aside for me.

On a trip to Rochester Art Supply, where I'd begun buying all my supplies, as Scrantoms had become

too expensive, pens of thousands of colors lept off there stand and into my hands as if they needed me as much as I needed them.

In a short period of time I found myself consulting "the great book" looking for one more piece to do,

when none other than the same Vincent VanGogh I'd done in high school, the one my mother filed

under the house in the crawl space, glanced at me from one of the pages. Those of you who know me

know that I can see a sign when one pops up and I was. at once, busily working with my 'imagic markers"

creating, perhaps, a more updated work than my high school effort .

After the experiences with the three final paintings, and in coming to know my self better inside because

of them, I'd now begun to wonder more than ever why I was spending so much time creating

"renderings" from pictures in books of paintings done over 100 years ago. The subjects no longer

existed, the painter was dead and had been for quite some time and even if I progressed to the pinnacle

of this particular passion, the most that could be accomplished would be to become the greatest living

forger of Vincent VanGogh paintings alive today.

Now, that may be a noble attainment, but that's not what I'd set out to become. It seemed to me, more

and more each day, that I was missing what I'd truely wanted to be and had given up that pursuit for

the sake of someone elses style and techniques. The more I thought about this the further away from

dear Vincent I withdrew, which was hard distance to travel. In the recreation of some of his picture's

I had accomplished what I'd set out to do, and now it was time to move on and begin to establish, using

what I'd learned over the past two years, my own set of work and thereby become the artist who painted what he saw around himself. The departure from Vincent began to make sense and, strangely, as if

Vincent knew it, the music and the dance stopped.

I can see it in his eyes, from the final picture done in my "magic marker", Vincent let go, as I did,

knowing we'd helped each other, somehow, over all that time.

Portrait of Vincent VanGogh (1890)

"Vincent, if only you'd known one soft soul who'd

given you the comfort you so needed,

rather than the life of rejection you lived perhaps,

perhaps we all could have known you from 39 to 90,

and the world would be more full of your beauty".

I loved Vincent VanGogh, and everything he was, because for me, he represented what an artist was

to be. I came to realize how sad, and really, what a loss, this attitude of denial, and suffering,

was, and is. I became him, and all that he was, until I knew I didn't want to die for that.

Maybe, a life of long beauty rather than one of short intensity was a better way for me to go?

Vincent was comfortable to live in, but he wasn't me.

So I left 52 Summerville Drive, and everything that, really, owned me, to become, once again, me.

It had nothing to do with Vincent, it was about being.