Many years ago when I was in my early thirties and living in Married Housing at Western Michigan University with my first wife, Janet (she was finishing a degree in Modern Dance & Choreography), I did what a lot of young artists throughout history have done. I tossed a number of my early paintings into a dumpster. Actually, I had a good reason for doing so, or so I thought at the time.
We were moving from Kalamazoo to Cleveland, with a short stop-over with her parents in Erie, PA. Her dad was driving to Kalamazoo with a trailer to take back our stuff. When he arrived with a trailer that I knew immediately was too small for all of our stuff, I became annoyed. But instead of voicing that annoyance and incurring the wrath of my wife (things have changed, I can assure you), I simply suffered silently and, as an act of passive aggression, I began tossing paintings into the dumpster next to the building.
I should mention that my best friend and fellow artist, Paul Nehring, was there helping us load the trailer and seeing us off. After we said our goodbyes and then pulled away and out of sight, Paul did something I was not to find out about till years later – he rescued my paintings from the dumpster. At some point, he did inform me via letter (no one had heard of email yet) that he had the paintings and was going to remove them from their stretchers and ship them to me – all except for one, which he was keeping for himself. That piece was titled "Lady & the Ant."
Recently I discovered a photo of the painting, which I scanned and manipulated digitally. It is pictured above. I digitally added the planet Mars and the space background. Every time I look at it, I think of my dear friend and his rescue of the paintings tossed in anger.
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Cool story…I had never heard that. What a great thing he did.
I think this is a great piece. Hope all is well and that you are enjoying the beautiful spring weather.
Tracy