Today I made the decision to remove “Escaping” from the Fire Sale. It really came with no regrets. I was wrong to include it in the first place and I easily found a suitable replacement that fits into that decade of art anyhow. Even better yet, I found a buyer for it. Getting back to Escaping…
While it isn’t a favorite painting of mine from back in 1996, I’ve come to realize there is a lot of emotion to it that I had forgotten about. Rebekah and I met just a month before I moved into this bombed out apartment building to rent as a studio that winter. The conditions there were horrible but the 2000 sq ft of space was perfect. The building had burned down a few months earlier but half of it was clean enough to work. No electricity, no plumbing and worse of all no heat or air conditioning. $50 a month sounded good though. I had one electrical chord run up the stairs from the tenant below and I would plug in my lights and my stereo and go to town. In the winter I had to dress extra heavy and later my dad let me borrow a torpedo heater for the really cold nights that went down around zero degrees. Nothing like the smell of damar varnish and burning kerosene with loud heavy metal music.
I had been working on Escaping for about a month and a half when Rebekah and her friend Rebecca had asked to stop by that night. I was embarrassed by the studio space but I thought, hell, it isn’t my space really, so I agreed. What an amazing moment that night. Showing them both my work was so great, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the girl that would be my darling wife someday. She was amazing to talk to about my art, just like the night we had met a month earlier. You see, Rebekah was the first woman I dated that even cared about my being an artist. From day one we just connected in an uncanny way, in addition to our falling in love. That connection has always been there and it survives to an incredible degree today. From that night on she fell in love with that painting because at the time she was falling in love with me. I loved the painting at the time but as artists we always love what we’re working on and we quickly allow it to fall out of favor with the following painting. This sat on top of a futon in our first apartment and we even have a rare photo of us (if you knew how much Rebekah hates being photographed you wouldn’t be surprised) on it just weeks before we were married. Then it hung in our first home we rented in our living room and for the first few years of living in our home it hung in our great room. It went into storage around 2003 and for 7 years now it became hidden from our hearts just as all of the paintings in this fire sale were. It only took a short time before Rebekah had started to tell me that she was upset at my decision to include it. Last week I received so many emails about it that it got me wondering why I had made such a bad decision also. I like to pride myself on being the kind of husband that respects and knows what is best for our home. So, tonight I made the decision to remove it from the fire sale and mark it NFS. It will stay in our home and with my family for good.
In replacement I decided to add “Too Late”. The funny thing about this being added is that I found a buyer for it not very long ago due to the fire sale. I had intended to add it to the official Fire Sale page but once things got rolling it felt like something I should leave alone. I know now that the timing was right to remove Escaping and adding Too Late in its place.
Thank you everyone for your words of encouragement these past few weeks. The work has been stressful but a hell of a lot of fun no matter what. With one week to go who knows how things will work out. I’m working very hard this week. More than you can imagine. Take care.
