There will be newspaper stories about widows in farmhouses outside Paris and south of Duluth who discover a Sparhawk used three decades before to wrap the fish or carry the tulip bulbs through winter, and the auction of the original painting will allow her to buy her house, not face eviction, and put the 16 grandchildren through college.
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Of all the things that might have caught my attention last September 15 that fateful night, the retained shock was coming home [from open heart surgery] two weeks later and looking around me and realizing that had I never returned (impossibly possible) my things would have been (as they are under such ordinary circumstances) thrown into dumpsters, snatched and concealed, ferried off or tossed. This would not only be the possessions I care about and personal treasures, but of course and most of all, my life’s work. All the drawings and writing and paintings unsold . . . it was an incredibly devastating shock to see that so emphatically, so cold and raw.
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I had the feeling few hours ago that nothing I thought that mattered, matters.
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It doesn’t always dawn on me that I’ve been hither and yon and done a thing or two, and should probably work on publicizing it. The editor of the NY Post, Jerry Nachman who was a good friend of mine, once said to me, incredulously, “Don’t you believe in self-promotion?”
Well, uh, I never thought about it. Is it too late?
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I don’t know how to write out my whole life. I think the end results, these past two decades maybe started me turning my life around. Which really began with therapy in my early twenties.
It took me such a long time to turn from my very ruthless beginnings. From so many early years of being unfeeling, not quite human really. And KNOWING that, working to fully alter my character, terribly desperate to change.
Maybe it would be useful for people to know that it really is possible. There’s so much pain. I grew up in such terrifying horror. I don’t know how to go into that, approach that. I can tell you this: I NEVER expected my life to be as free or interesting or adventuresome as it has been. Though I’m in a constant battle of feeling such contempt for the me I once was, before I really understood my own acting out, and now-me who is trying to hold on to the heroic I’ve gone through to be born anew. I’m Heathcliff and Jekyll and Hyde and St Joan.
I have been dragons and I have slain them.
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I would love to have books of my work with good prints, and I’d love seeing it too, my progress and change in style and evolution of moi. Or a slide show, or something. I regret having bad photographs of so many, or even worse, none at all. I never never never never never used to think of taking pictures of my work. Never. Now I’m thinking it’s something I can learn from, as well as the preservation aspects.
I remain certain that I am going to be universally considered an important American artist at some point, hopefully prior to dropping dead. And my work finally collected in museums. I know it’s good, and unique, and original.
Not everything’s worthy of documentation but a good 60-70 percent is. Not bad for a kid from Brooklyn.
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The only impulse I’ve had is to try and organize and solidify my papers and work, to make it easier on historians to keep alive, and still have some control over what gets selected out. Whoosh. I want some legacy, I think about it.
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Eventually (nice to think of being alive to see it) someone will be collecting the work I’ve done into professional shots from the actual painting, and setting up museum displays and wings, and making lots of books and making up lots of nonsense about what I must have eaten that day to paint like that and where I stood in what light and the turn of a wrist and grasp of a brush and brand of a pigment and my blue and green and water and sky periods and what I really meant not what’s just obvious. Secret mystical symbolism. Sigh!
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I have begun to pose for your documentary. I sashayed through the garden drink in hand cigarette locked in toothy smile, decked out in a fabulous red silk multicolored embroidered robe. Feelin’ good!
Ah, Barbara! You had a sneaky premonition your reach might exceed your grasp.
I have a kind of vague hope to organize all my work and set things in order but I don’t know if I’ll make it, though I have felt more lively and that I just might live to 100. Most of my relatives made it into their nineties. I certainly ought to outlive the bastards.
I’m working on it, Barbara. The Hawks Perch is alive & well, garnering new viewers and keeping your memory alive. And the first book of your biographical trilogy is about 50% complete.
It is my mission to help you “outlive the bastards.”
[NOTE: Any pictures anyone might have of Barbara or her artworks and/or any memories of Barbara you would like to share for possible inclusion in the biographical material I am compiling would be most welcome.]
oops.john@gmail.com
The Hawks Perch 