Redtree Times

A Simple Life– At the Principle Gallery

Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!

–Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)

I woke up this morning way too early after a long day yesterday consisting of two long periods of time traveling the highway to and from, interrupted only by a handful of hours spent at the Principle Gallery where I gave my annual Gallery Talk. I woke with our housecat Sweet Babboo spooning up against me with her warm softness and the thoughts and feelings of yesterday in my head. Both filled me with great gratitude and all I could think was to ask myself how I came to be so lucky.

How can someone who lives such a relatively small and unassuming life deserve such warmth, from both our chubby little cat and the lovely group of folks who took time from their busy lives to spend an hour or so with me at the gallery?

I don’t know if it was simply the remainder of the dopamine/adrenaline that surged through me yesterday, but I found myself a bit teary-eyed in bed thinking how fortunate I truly was in this life.

Thinking about early this morning brought me to the lines above from Pirandello’s play. I doubted that I was born a character in anyone’s play, but I wondered if I had over the years become a character in my own life, something created in much the same way as my work. Maybe even in some way created by my own work.

I was the work and the work was me, if that makes any goddamn sense. Like I said, I under slept after a long day and may be functioning in a bit of a fog this morning.

I think what I am trying to say is that yesterday was vastly reassuring to me, that it made me aware that though I will someday die, my character in the form of my work will live on. As an artist– and a human– what more can I ask?

Like the paintings that were given away yesterday, I will have fulfilled my purpose.

This may not be completely clear, but I just want to thank each and every person who made an effort to come to the gallery yesterday, some from a great distance, for making me feel like such a lucky man. My words cannot express my depth of feeling.

And extreme gratitude and love to Michele, Taylor, Clint, Owen, and Brady at the gallery for making it all possible, again and again, with such warmth and friendship.

You made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world, kind of like Lou Gehrig. Wait, bad example. But you get the meaning, I am sure.

Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s a fitting song from 1997 from the Verve, Lucky Man.