tragedy

Miriam began serious painting right after she began art school.

She painted hours each day. She would call me at 11 or 12 at night and I would drive over to the painting studio at Texas Women’s University and get her.

In four years, she had a big pile of very fine paintings.

She like to paint religious subjects, which are always tricky. Go too far one way and they are preachy and pushy, push the other way and they are drivel and insipid. She hit down the middle well.

Her Adam always had a beard, logical to me. I suggested that Eve should be a redhead, but she didn’t always follow my idea!

Her 7 days of creation was wonderful, a vision that had never been put on canvas before.

Her “By His Stripes We Are Healed” stood 14’ high and was 10 feet wide. A 24” wide strip and then a skip that size. It was a crucifixion scene, dark and moody, with just enough detail on the stripes to work.

I have seen people look at that one and cry, it was so powerful.

She painted Adam full face, looking straight at the camera. The light was straight from the side so one side was in total shade. Eve was silhouetted on that dark side. I loved that painting. It hung at the foot of our bed for a long time.

Then we moved from Texas to Washington. I carefully crated up all the paintings and the moving company transported them to our new home.

For a while they sat in an unused corner of my cabinet shop in Washington state. Then I moved back to Idaho and I cleared out my part.

I made arrangements to go back and get Miriam’s paintings on a weekend.

Wednesday evening the phone rang. The building was on fire. Horrors of horrors. It was an old frame furniture store. My shop stuff was gone, but Miriam’s paintings were there.

Everything burned. 5 years of hard work, evaporated.

But, wait, we were professional photographers, so we had wonderful pictures of these paintings, right? Well, actually we did, but of just a few.

She was sad, I was heart broken.

“I Sea, Eye See” was a seascape with large billowing waves, and floating in the waves were 19 pair of huge eyes, all looking at the viewer. She had a biblical motif, but to me it was pure surrealism. The stuff dreams are made of.

But they are no more.

I miss them deeply.