Out of the Closet

   

  After my dad died in 1986, it took me five years before I could listen to the recordings I had of his voice.  I was on a long road trip up North, and suddenly decided to listen to the old cassette tapes I always had with me in the car.  There he was again, laughing, telling jokes, and singing old country western songs at his mandatory-attendance annual birthday party for himself.  

     It hurt to hear him, to imagine him playing his old Fender guitar, surrounded by his grandchildren, children, and a host of friends who adored him, charming rascal that he was. But it was also wonderful to have him back in my life again, to see his handsome face before me as I rode down the road.

     So it hasn't surprised me that it has taken me seven years to surround myself with Tom's art again.  After he died, I could hardly look at it.  Most of my own collection has been huddled together in a closet in the back of the house, meticulously stored in archival bags and boxes.  I have pulled it out now and again to show friends and family, but mostly I've walked by it, carefully guarding the open wound in my heart that just never seems to heal.

     This year, though - this 'hard to believe it's been seven years" year- I started tentatively bringing individual pieces into the open again, slowly replacing pictures one the wall I don't really like that much, with his paintings that I love too much.  I place them temporarily on different walls with push pins, glancing at them sideways, testing to see if I will turn into a 'pillar of salt' if I look at them directly, or too long.  Will my fragile little missing-Tom heart break into pieces if I allow myself to breathe again, to force myself to face his absence in the presence of his artwork?

     So far my heart is still intact.  It's struggling, I can tell, to resist the urge to hide in the backroom closet, but I'm gently urging myself to take this next step in the impossible task of accepting the loss of him.  

     And so, I'm inviting you to come along with me and do the same.

    If you go to www.tomrubick.com, you will see my tentative first attempts to archive some of Tom's artwork.  I bought the domain name for this website seven years ago. but only created the site yesterday.  It is most definitely inadequate and incomplete.  There are many sections of the site that need to be populated with images.  What you will see are the jpgs. Tom sent me in 2007.   I'll be looking for more, hidden in the mysterious nooks and crannies of my desktop, and I'll be asking all of you to send me what you might have too.  

     I know that this site does not rise to the professional level that his artwork warrants, but it does allow all of us to see him again - his talent, skill, wit, breathtaking and bold use of color, the application of meticulous and intricate brush strokes in a medium that many artists cannot master. What was he thinking when he painted eyes in a background landscape, or turned his colleagues into animals in three-piece suits?  What pain did he feel when he painted a dissected self-portrait?  Were the images always dancing around in his head in a swirl of shocking color? How did he have the patience to paint a thousand tiny leaves, or ten different patterns of wallpaper in thirty different colors?  How could he look at an object and capture every line, curve, bend and twist with a pencil on paper?

    I wish I'd asked him all of those questions, and more, but I didn't.  And how I wish he was here.

    But since he stubbornly refuses to return, I'm getting him out into the open, putting that art on the wall where I can look him in the face, in all of his wonderfulness.  

   

    Less grief.  More Tom.  Just the way he wanted it to be.

      

   www.tomrubick.com