Tony and Nathaniel

Tony and Nathaniel. This was sent to me by someone in the class--from a review night in Songs & Places--maybe 2010. Nathaniel and I must have been listening to somebody perform, or present their work for the week with a song. In any case, the mood is perfect--a kind of attentive contemplation that accounts for all the variables in feeling. The classes were never about ideas, really--even when they could be terribly specific--a 1940's photo of the water tower in Okemah, Oklahoma--Woody Guthrie's home town, or why the color red so often figured in funeral garb in the African American South--but even these examples conjure up images, and the images themselves associations. So that it's not just a water tower, but the torus-shaped dull-orange tank that one remembers--a pointed detail that keys memories of the events in Guthrie's life as a whole.

That's how it works, this sense of association--and Nathaniel--although rather formal here (one of his guises) could be a master. His paintings had an absolute sense of wander. I never knew quite how he did it--what state of mind let him follow a path of such dissociation--or maybe rather it was that each element was for him perfectly focused, as with a very softly colored kaleidoscope, or a foggy Berkeley morning, when those strange wisps meander through the streets...

I gave him the Resnick book once (Out of the Picture)--back when you could get a remaindered copy for not that much. Milton Resnick's brilliant (and brilliantly ornery) commentary on painting, life, and what not to do. Often cast in those terms, since Resnick was his own brilliant contrarian.
With Nathaniel, that may have been a mistake. Too wishful on my part--my own dreams and aspirations. He took it to heart, maybe more than we knew.
___

One evening he joined in on a song, playing an (imaginary?) trumpet. Except that Nathaniel didn't know how to play the trumpet. No matter--that didn't stop him. He needed to play the trumpet, and so play he did. He was convincing, too!

I have an image of him in New York, at CUE, where I was having a show in 2006. He'd flown all night to join us, help with the installation. I can see him there, wrapped a great coat (some kind of very large leather garment), a little off to the side, asleep on the gallery floor, looking very peaceful.

I hope he's still painting. His gifts are wonderful and true.

.