Well, so I went into the hospital, and I didn't come out for months. The original operation was much harder and longer than my doctors including my surgeon though it would be. But it was a success. However, I quickly got one of those hospital based pneumonias, and sank into a coma for something like a week or more. Finally, I did come out of it. And then I tried to stand up, and eventually walk. But I wasn't supposed to.. Eventually I went into a place for rehabilitation and there relearned how to walk, and how to deal with a kitchen and a bathroom. When I got out I still could not do that much on my own. This is now some months later, and I am still not back to my old strength. Stopping about two weeks ago I fell down three times at different times of day, in different rooms. In each case, we had to call someone [one of the people who work in the building] to pick me up. After all of that I decided that I was not going to fall again, and have been working on it. I now have a physiotherapist, one whom Carol was using. He is doing me good. I also decided that, what with my poor record of falling down, that I would use a walker whenever I go out of the building. I had been using one that was meant for indoors only, still on loan from the rehabilitation place, but it really worked poorly outside. I am still not working, although the studio will be possible. Meanwhile I am still trying to get rid of the remains of my miscellaneous collection of books. That is, anything I can send out to auction.
I am not getting to shows, yet. I have not been to a museum since that last not I wrote about Poussin and Courbet. Meanwhile David Carbone discovered that most of the frame for the House of Death and Life was missing, and it had to be reproduced. There also were bits of paint lacking, and what look like knife cuts in one panel. That had to be fixed. There were other problems with that and other paintings. A restorer had to work on some of them.
That is about the traveling show of about 25 large paintings made between 1963 and 1990 which is already up in the University of Virginia Museum.Next it goes to the University of New Hampshire Museum, and I don't know their dates.[but it sounds as though it most probably will open some time in October or so]. It will also go to the Southwest Missouri State University, January 23rd to March 15th, 2009; and LSU from September 4-October 23, 2009; it will be shown in the New York Academy of Art March 31-April 28, 2009.
There is a catalog with a large color plate for each of the paintings in the show. The curators were Langdon Quin, David Carbone, and Lincoln Perry. Lincoln wrote the long catalog essay. They were the people who decided to do the show and worked it up. It was not my idea, and I was only told about it when it became clear to them that it was going to happen. Lincoln writes well and apparently with ease. His long essay was a big undertaking. I am also happy about both Langdon and David's much shorter, written contributions. David, also, being here and involved, found out about all the problems with individual paintings which required repair, most of which I was unable to do. Because of him we do have all the paintings in the catalog in the show. They are all eloquent as writers, and they did very well in choosing the show. Since so many of my paintings are "oners", ideas I had once, and have not repeated, there are still another 25 paintings which would have made a different show. That goes as much for still life and landscape as it does for figure paintings. I also paint the nude, that is a nude single figure with no pushy story line, although I do have one called "Brian as Helios." Also, the show has only large paintings, and only one painting which can be called, in part, a study for another. My smaller paintings and my pastels are not included. At some point in the early 1980s I stopped drawing in pencil and charcoal and worked only in color with pastel. In my Schoelkopf shows it was very easy to fill a room with that year's pastels, so you can tell I did a lot of them. None the less, this is by far the largest group of my work ever to have been gathered together for a show. It does give an idea of what I am about.
Now some mea culpa's. I know I have not kept up the blog. Writing it now, is a sign I am feeling better. But I missed letters, and missed getting together with people who wrote. I also have been getting letters from Mahasti Khalili but nothing works in my attempt to reply to them. If you look around the internet[Mahasti] you should be able to find me. I can't find you. Some of the people on the Midwest artist's group know how to do it. And this note, here, should prove your Kashrut to them.
I hope that all of you have been healthy and had productive painting summers.
I do intend to keep the blog going, but I will have to get a little better yet, so that I can see some art which will inspire me to write to you, or even read a book or catalog that gets me going..
Love,
Gabriel
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