At a glance.
I wander through a canny valley, catching glimpses of an older man whose strident rhythmic steps betray his long-aching limbs.
But when I try to spy him, I find he isn’t there.
I had decided to make a drawing for my father’s birthday this year.
The result felt sorrowful and hard, maybe even scary. The lively red and blues of the reference photo were replaced with the haunted depth of age. This darkness I couldn’t shake as I tried and failed at several other attempts.
Ultimately I gave him a sketch of him playing the fiddle, the day after his birthday. I made a passing joke about the other, darker portrait.
He died suddenly just days after this portrait was drawn, within 48 hours of the last time I saw him. He had been happy. Excited. Tired. But not haunted, or dying, far as I knew.
I honestly like the new sketch more than the fiddle sketch, because I can SMELL him in it and I can remember what it felt like to stick my face in this shoulder. If you just caught him walking on the street you always looked twice because something in your brain said "famous person" or "person about to murder you". He was iconic.