I am really trying to keep this up blog thing and not doing well.
I want to make a short video to document something artistic and bizzare that happened. It is evidence (I feel) that time is not linear and things are not as they appear.
Here is the story that goes with it.. My grandfather was an artist, sculpture, cartoonist and architect who lived from 1886 to 1980. He made thousands of paintings that he sold and gave away, when he died there were still a few hundred in my mothers possession.
My mother and I had moved in with him when I was about 17, and he was in his late eighties. It was my job to keep him company, cook and clean etc. I did that for about two years until he felt more independent (yes thats true)then I moved out on my own. He enjoyed torturing me many ways, but one way was by not allowing me to have any of his artwork. He would give away his paintings all the time. My sisters or other family members (and strangers) would visit and they would always walk out the door with art. But not me because I was not married.
Of course I would object to his ridiculous unfairness that I had to be married, and so would my mom. And on at least two occassions when that happened he gave me a gift. One time he gave me artwork done by my grandmother, a beautiful needlepoint. I didn't get to keep that, it was regifted to my sister by my mother years later. He also gave me a painting of a women with a cow someone did, only because he felt nobody would ever want it.
There was one painting he did that I liked a lot as a kid. It was of a castle. He would offer it to people when they came over, he would offer to sell it to them dirt cheap. He would tell them I wanted it but I could only hae it if I paid him $500 dollars but they could have it for $200. He wouldn't give it away because he was afraid they would give it to me. I couldn't afford it since I only got paid 25 dollars a week to take care of him. When he died my mom gave me that painting, but in the months before he died (age 93) he removed the frame and threw it away and touched up the painting adding "people" to it. Take what you want from that, but he was mean.
Over the years there was another painting I liked. It was a watercolor of the lighthouse at Montauk Point on Long Island. My sisters and I all liked it. It hung in our living room for years. I wanted it because it went with my house and I had little else from him but the doctored castle. But my sisters did not agree I should have it. My mother kept it in the basement, she didn't know what to do with it and one day I think she was pretty much convinced I should have it. When she went to retrieve it is was missing.
A couple more years went by and lots of anger festered in me about not getting artwork. I finnally poured my heart out to my mom (that she gave his art to strangers but not me just like he did) It was pretty much all gone by this point. She said she had a few pieces left that nobody wanted and offered them to me.
Here is where it gets interesting. She sent me home with several really old pieces. One of them was a watercolor piece of a lake or river with a hideous frame with cracked glass, the mat was yellow and the painting had a tear in it from the glass cutting into it. I stuck that painting behind my couch where it stayed.
About a year later someone moved the couch and we saw the glass had broken more tearing the painting even more. I took the painting out of the frame and decided to store it in my portfolio. But, I couldn't fit it in because the mat was so huge, so I decided to remove the mat.
As I pulled the tape off the back of the mat I could see that there was a second paper taped behind tha painting, which was odd. I pulled it back and I don't even know how to explain the feeling.. It was like I had lost my mind and the universe was just spinning around my head. The second paper had an identical painting of the montauk lighthouse on it that had gone missing years before!
It was so unbeleivable I just stopped pulling on it I thought I would faint. The two paintings are still stuck together now because I want to video pulling them apart, even though I can't imagine anyone believing this story even if they see the video. From what I can see the painting looks similar but different from the one that went missing years ago but essentially its the same.
Of all the hundreds of paintings my grandfather did in this size, for him to have accidentally taped it behind the other and for me to wind up with it so many years later (70 years later) is just nuts. It makes me wonder did he wonder what happened to this painting and do it again? Because he didn't repeat scenes (unless he was paid too do that) Did he talk about it to me when I lived with him and I just blurred it out.. cause he talked a lot.
So in effect what I have would be his original.. original.. painting of the Montauk Lighthouse... which is so cool.
So what I will post is the video (hopefully) that I will make when the two paintings are pulled apart, and I also have a picture somewhere that has the other montauk point painting in the background... hopefully the difference is obvious... we shall see. I can't wait to hang it in my living room :)
