Return of the Prodigal Blogger

Return of the Prodigal Son, Rembrandt van Rijn
oil on canvas, 262 x 206 cm.
Hermitage, St. Petersburg

I know. I know. I've been a bad blogger. I ran away for better than two weeks and didn't so much as leave a note. Thank you for your notes, however. I'm touched by your concern, and in some cases, your gentle chiding. One blogger assumed I was on a top-secret mission with the U.S. government. OK. You were somewhat close. I've been coaching Sarah Palin on foreign policy. Did you happen to catch that brilliant performance with Katie Couric?

Of course I'm joking. I was actually in Paris observing my painting "Heart's Destiny" being installed in the dazlling new contemporary wing of the Louvre.

Looks great doesn't it? I'm not too keen on the ostentatious frame, but what the hey, it's the Louvre, right?

You don't buy that either? Seriously, I've been doing what I usually do when I disappear from Blogland. I've been holed up in my studio, doing battle with the canvas. And Bennie, God love him, has been selling them faster than I can produce. Even "Heart's Destiny," which I blogged about in late April, is finally being shipped, not to the Louvre, but to a collector in Durham, North Carolina, an employee of Duke University. If you happened to have read my earlier post, you may recall that I said the painting was "my painted acknowledgment of the way our lives are often altered for the better when we follow our heart’s urgings." Although I didn't meet the buyer of this painting, she left me a very kind note telling me she was "thrilled" to own my work. I was very attached to this particular painting--it had great emotional resonance for me. As I'd told another blogger, another artist, I was afraid I had jinxed the painting's sale by own desire to continue to look at it. I'd actually felt slightly sad on seeing Bennie take it down to prepare it for shipment.

And then yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with the buyer on the phone about a logistical matter regarding the shipping. At that time she told me she had cried when viewing the painting. (Bennie had mentioned this. I just didn't quite grasp it until I spoke with her personally.) It seems she is in a difficult time of transition in her personal life and "Heart's Destiny" simply spoke to her about her own heart's destiny. And it did that when she first stood before the painting and regarded its surfaces, before she knew its title had anything to do with hearts or destinies. As I have written before, there is such an inevitability in the process by which a painting comes to reside with the right person. Such exchanges are what keep me going back into the studio.

And, equally thrilling for me was the placement of "Desert Spirits" in the permanent collection of MOMA in New York.

OK, you're on to me. I'm a very poor liar. Truth be told, "Desert Spirits" is now residing in a lovely home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A home in which I am invited to visit and stay in the guest room, with the understanding that it is unfinished due to the owners' recurring purchases of my art. "I'll sleep on the floor," I said.

It is this particular couple's third acquisition from me, and they told me my painting would be replacing a series of original Dali lithographs, which would remain in the room, only on an opposite wall. This I'm not joking about. They actually laughed and said, "Now, you can tell people your art has replaced Salvador Dali's."

So that's what I'm doing now: I am telling you: My art has replaced Salvador Dali's! And I trust you are rightfully impressed. I know I am. I'm impressed, again and again, by the faith and generosity of those rare souls who purchase art at whatever level is affordable to them. I am including those who buy from the toniest showplace in Manhattan, those who buy from smaller galleries such as Bennie's and mine, those who buy from art fairs and flea markets and their next door neighbor. People who invest in hand-made things that have no function other than as a resting place for tired eyes--these people are unusual. I mean, you can't climb behind the wheel of a painting or a sculpture or a piece of pottery, and drive it down the freeway, cutting off those you want to impress with your flashiness. Art is much more personal than that. It seldom impresses anyone other than the buyer.

Transactions like this, like so many things, good and bad, like breakdowns in home appliances even, tend to come in threes. Last, but no less exciting for me, Monique, my brilliant French economist, whom I wrote about this past summer, chose to purchase a second painting from me.

Flow, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 48"
private collection, Arlington, Virginia

Monique called me when her painting arrived. In that lovely French accent she said, "Eet eez more beautiful than I imagined. Even my 5-year-old gasped when I unwrapped it."

The 5-year-old and the 7-year-old were having a grand time stomping on the bubble wrap too. I heard the mini-explosions in the background, the whoops of delight bouncing off the walls. Monique was shouting, "You weel go to bed at 5:15 EEF you don't deseest in making that racket!"

"Not you, San! Theez eerascible keeds!"


Dear friends, I hope you will forgive my prodigal disappearance. I am happy to be back.

Shall we kill the fatted calf?

Shall we stretch a colossal sheet of bubble wrap from one end of cyberspace to the other? Shall we dance on it till it explodes?

Shall we go with the flow?