Lost Art

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When I say “lost art”, I don’t mean a lost skill.  I really mean lost artwork.

Pen and ink, lighthouse, art

Pen and ink of the Battery Point Lighthouse at Crescent City, CA around 1981.  Preserved in a photo.

Have you ever lost track of your artworks.  After decades of doing art, there were some pieces I had entirely forgotten about.  Mary used to take pictures of my art.  It is the only record I have of some of my work.  After all these years I don’t remember where or to whom some of it went.  I never kept track of things in a serious manner, since art was never my first career.  Between selling art, giving pieces away, moving again and again, and years of living life, things fade in memory.  Then, out of the blue I come across a photograph of some lost and forgotten art.  It’s a bit of bliss to me.  All because Mary, of Sneaking Bliss purveyor of bliss, had to forethought to record my art.

37 thoughts on “Lost Art”

  3. That was a lovley work of art too. Now since you have gained a reputation, stop giving away your art. I do hope that you are selling your art now. Thank goodness for a good wife that thought to at least preserve your work in pictures.

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    • My first thought when I read your comment was “oh Yvonne, I stopped giving away art years ago.” Then I remembered I gave away a painting yesterday. When I was young and my friends figured out I could draw and paint, then everyone wanted a piece of art. It didn’t take long to figure out I couldn’t keep up, so I stopped. Now it is just for charity auction donations. Except yesterday was a special gift. Amanda, Mary’s co-author on Buddy the Wayward Wolverine, was here and we gave her an original Buddy painting. It was the first one I did of a wolverine, and it was from one of Amanda’s wildlife camera pictures of Buddy. Amanda is also the biologist that track the real Buddy.

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  5. So about 30 years after your death. .. Someone will buy this piece at a garage sale, hang it in their home. Then when they die, their child will bring it to Antique Roadshow and it will be worth billions!😛

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  12. Same here, Tim. My sisters have some of it that I have forgotten and it is like revisiting a moment when I stumble across them in a hallway or bathroom. I have photographed my work since 06 so now there is a record, but those really old ones catch me by surprise everytime. I like the moodiness in the above piece.

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  14. This is a nice piece of “lost art”. I think that happens to a lot of us. I know it has to me. What I really would like to find are the first architecturals I did for my husband’s construction business. They were truly awful and I kept them for a long time to show myself how far I had come. Alas, somewhere in my moves they were lost.

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  16. This is very touching. It’s a piece of you there, and that a reunion with that part of you from long ago happened because Mary was thoughtful and caring enough – and respected your work enough – to take photographs…it’s pretty wonderful!

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Let me know what you think!