Fine Artwork

I can remember as a little girl watching my father paint. He did not use Benjamin Moore. He used oils—on canvas.

My father copied fine art.

His works hung all over my parents’ house. And when they moved I inherited them, and I displayed a few of them in my house.

Until very recently, I never gave it too much thought.

The paintings were nothing more than an “old man”, a “harlequin”, “a girl”, and some “card players.”

When I decided it was time to overhaul my living room I made a conscious decision to choose artwork that spoke to me. I did not want to simply purchase wall hangings based solely on color from Homegoods and then arrange them around my living room.

And so I went to the internet and meticulously combed through catalogues of art posters. But in the process of clicking on one painting, at the bottom of the screen popped customers who liked this also liked that. And the “that” that the customers liked were the copied paintings of my father—Modigliani, Derain, Manet and Cézanne.

My taste in artwork mirrored my father’s.

We both enjoyed modern art—specifically: fauvism—as does my youngest daughter.

And while my mother will become melancholy at family events over the fact that my father is no longer with us; that is not when I miss him. I miss the conversations we never had. I miss not having the opportunity to ask him questions that only he can answer. I want to know why he started painting and why he stopped. I want to know why he never painted a still life or a landscape—he only painted portraits. What did he find so haunting in the subject’s faces?—Why did they speak to him?

And the artwork that speaks to me—a Matisse and a Chagall—now hang in my living room.

They make me happy.

And “the girl”, the “old man” and the “card players” that my father painted have been moved to the hallway upstairs where they may greet me every morning as I go down to breakfast and may kiss me good night as I head to sleep.

My father’s paintings also speak to me.

They keep a conversation that I never had, alive.