DEATH PAINTING: my wife died a year ago today

Suzanne Dying 9w074 conté and acrylic on rag paper 19 1/2 x 18 inches

A year ago this morning my wife, Suzanne Mauer, died after a nine-year battle with metastatic hemangiopericytoma. Her doctors, Ronald Blum at Beth Israel and Robert Maki at Sloan Kettering, were wonderful doctors and loving men. Suzanne's death was long, lingering, agonizing, and included a vicious and very expensive legal battle to get treatment approved by her insurance carrier. She went, in a wheelchair, to Albany to talk to the lawmakers in the Capitol and, based on that trip and the incredible help of Mark Scherzer, there is now a New York State law that says that a person with a rare disease cannot be denied coverage based on a lack of "clinical studies".

She was tough, loving and complicated. Her computer screen saver said "LOVE RULES." These paintings are love letters. And I will continue making them until they stop demanding to be made. The hell with decorative painting.

WHAT IS WORK FOR AN ARTIST?

When I was a young art student at the Museum School in the 70's, I was moping down the hall one day, depression blaring from my every cell. I admit it was because I could not get my latest obsession du jour to do the horizontal mambo with me, but my mentor and friend John Thompson, Dean of Students, was unaware of that.

Dean Thompson assumed rather that I was troubled by a dip in my creative output. He took me into his office and said, "Jonathan, when others are lying in the park watching the clouds go by, they are goofing off. When you do it, you are working! Remember that every artist needs fanny time as much as hand time." Those words, exactly.

In this dark December, the first after the death of my wife, I look at my studio, devoid of new work for a month or so, and remember John Thompson's words. I know I am still in process on both the DEAD SUZANNE and the new MASTURBATION paintings. I'll post some sketches I've just completed when I shoot them.

DAYS GO BY...NO STUDIO TIME

I've been doing so much of the business chores of art, that it has been too long since I was in the studio. When I knew I wanted to be an artist, what I didn't know was that one day I would be buried in inventories on excel while rebuilding a website, and social networking in a world of web2.0

I have more DEAD SUZANNE paintings to do...they are in my head. I am starting to the huge malaise that builds as days go by without painting.

The "new" profile picture is one of me in my studio around 1985 or so. It was at 1255 Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The oil painting behind me is called Up First near the Queensborough, and I hope to find it in storage. It was one of a large body for work called VIEWS FROM A YELLOW CAB. Somebody wants to buy a print. I don't remember selling it; 1985 is so far from these days of excel inventories and digital archiving of my work.

At least the new website is up!!

My Story, Briefly

Art has been in my blood all my life. I was a Museum of Modern Art “stroller baby.”

An early proponent of neo-expressionism, I painted anger and rage and violence, loneliness, isolation and burning, screaming sexual desire. During this period I began exhibiting work in Frank Marino’s Soho gallery. I also showed with Nico Smith in the East Village. Cookie Mueller featured me in one of her Details Magazine articles.

Then, in 1988, I stopped painting. My demons demanded I search for peace; I removed myself from the excesses of 80s nightlife and began a journey, through years of prayer and meditation, that led me, renewed, back to the canvas.

In 1998 I started painting again: exuberant landscapes, Eden, the Garden before Man. I started selling direct to individual collectors and corporations, including Pfizer Corporation and Kirkland & Ellis.

My studio is near the Fulton Ferry waterfront in Brooklyn. Having searched for God so many places I finally found her. She walks into my studio and takes off her clothes. My paintings celebrate Her. Thank God.

Naked Girl 30" x 22" gouache on paper