Entry - 5.11.24

One afternoon over four decades ago, I was riding in the passenger seat of Ken's car as we passed through the sliver of shops and businesses that lined the main drag of West Islip, our hometown. As was the case with most middle class kids back then, Ken drove a dirt-cheap jalopy. I was never sure if the fumes that filled the interior came from burning motor oil or exhaust, but, for safety's sake, it was wise to always leave the windows open a crack. Young people tend to explore areas that more mature folk would never visit, seeking out secluded, unsung locations at which to gather, and Ken wanted to introduce me to one of his latest finds. We eventually ventured into a zone south of Montauk Highway, where the town's wealthier denizens lived. Ken zigzagged along beautiful, tree-lined lanes, past impressive homes on sizable properties, until we came to the rounded terminus of a cul-de-sac where he parked the car. I looked out the window unimpressed with what I saw: a shallow swatch of grass about forty feet wide on which stood a single bench. Below the bench, a rubble gradient sloped down to the shoreline of the Great South Bay. A miniature lighthouse was situated to our left, beyond which we could see the bridge to Captree Island, and behind us were expensive, multi-storied homes with perfect lawns and sculpted shrubbery.

We were in our early twenties. Ken, a childhood friend who had grown up across the street from my parents' home, was an entertaining speaker, full of humorous, sensational and raucous tales which he related bestrewn with a deluge of invective and profanity. He had timed this trip to coincide with that day's sunset, which didn't prove to be particularly awe-inspiring, though watching the colors of the bay change from deep ultramarine to translucent cerulean was pretty satisfying. A mournful note sounded from the mini-lighthouse's foghorn every minute or so. Night was coming on, but we were enjoying the moody scene and were in no hurry to be moving on.

Deep in conversation, we paid no heed to the sound of tires grinding on the gravel roadway behind us. Then we were hailed by a deep, authoritative voice and turned around to see a police car stopped in the circle, a cop standing half emerged from its open door. He studied us over the roof of his car. “The park closes at sunset,” he stated firmly. We looked around us, totally confused. “What park?” we asked. “The one you're standing in,” he answered. The park to which he was referring couldn't have been more than five feet deep. We weren't drinking or smoking pot. We weren't creating a disturbance, just quietly talking. Even if we were inclined in that direction, there wasn't anything we could possibly vandalize. Knowing it was pointless to argue, we walked over to Ken's car, got in and drove away, all under the scrutiny of that heroic officer.

I would like to say that that experience was quite unique, but it wasn't. Young people in our town were regularly rousted from public places such as schoolyards, woodlands, shore fronts, beaches and parks (the only locations available to them in that suburban accretion to congregate and socialize). And those “wild” places suitable for gathering or simply enjoying some scenery were quickly disappearing. My childhood witnessed the loss of most free space: first the nearby woods, then the treed lots where we would play, and finally those businesses that required acreage: farms, nurseries and stables. By the time I was in my twenties, peddling housing was so profitable that entrepreneurs were filling in swamps and diverting streams to open up land on which to build. What “Nature” hadn't been swallowed up by developers was stingily meted out to the people, regulated by a host of rules and restrictions and monitored by public and private enforcement. 

Fortunately, while I was in my early teens, my parents decided that our family would join my mother's sister's family on annual camping trips (usually to Upstate New York, Vermont and New Hampshire), and I got a more intimate introduction to Nature. I discovered what real darkness is, actually seeing the stars unobscured by atmospheric glare for the first time. I took hikes in dense woods and in open fields. I slept in a canvas tent throughout both steamy and freezing nights. I warmed myself at fires fueled with dead wood I'd collected myself in the vicinity of our campsite. I swam in random streams and lakes. I showered in ice cold water fresh from a well. I once got zapped by an electrified fence while attempting to join a herd of cows grazing contentedly in a grassy meadow. And I really liked all of it. During one of our camping trips, we were sharing a meal at a picnic table when a gaggle of four or five skunks approached. My uncle warned us, “Just stay still. If you startle them, they'll spray us.” The skunks joined us, even venturing under our table to meander at our feet. They stayed with us so long that we eventually got bored and began to quietly converse among ourselves. I think they were expecting handouts, and, once it became clear that none were forthcoming, they moseyed off into the woods. (Just one episode of the many that our travels provided.)

But, in truth, even on these annual vacations, I wasn't experiencing untamed Nature. We almost always chose to camp in private, commercial campgrounds with electric hook-ups, public toilets and showers, laundries, game rooms and small convenience stores. Many times these sites offered in-ground swimming accommodations. Often the campgrounds could be congested with sites wedged into a relatively compact space, crowds regularly passing by our small clearing and cars slowly sauntering by on the dirt roads, their occupants gaping blankly at us seated at our picnic table as we gaped back. The hiking paths we traversed, usually fairly short and contained within the borders of the owner's property, were littered here and there with candy wrappers and cigarette butts. We weren't exactly roughin' it.

Looking back today, I would have to say that, although those teenage camping trips didn't exactly fulfill my desire for a “raw” Nature experience, participating in them provided a good step in the right direction. 

A lot of people are fond of opining about Nature with a capital “N”. I'm often confused by what they mean by that. The word “Nature” can be used as an all-encompassing expression which covers infinite facets of our environment. It's a convenient catchphrase. I'm guilty of using the “N” word in a pretty ambiguous way. I'll talk about my love of Nature, my drive to explore Nature, my interest in escaping the confines of the city to visit Nature. It's all very vague, but I believe my audience gets the idea. I'm referring to a place apart from the man-made world of buildings, trains, subways, roadways, businesses, advertisements, traffic, crowds, congestion, pollution, noise, fumes, trash and vermin. That place could be upon a mountain, beside a lake, along a river, out in the desert or deep in a forest, but you can be certain about one aspect of all these natural places: they are not the invention of some obsessed entrepreneur hoping to bilk a stupefied public out of a few bucks. These places just exist (unfortunately in ever-decreasing numbers) and require no real intervention by man, except perhaps a conscious effort to minimize the impact of humans on their fragile terrains. When used in its most all-encompassing way, Nature includes plants, animals, landscape, geology, the atmosphere, the planets and stars, all of physical reality... basically, the universe. 

Some people think of Nature as an entity with emotions and desires. The angry sea hopes to drown us. A mountain challenges us conquer its heights. The sun smiles benevolently upon us. And so on. I guess, being human, we can't help but associate our own feelings with everything around us, both animate and inanimate.

Many people consider Nature to be the enemy. They struggle to ensure that Nature cannot intrude upon their lives. They'll drive in circles in a parking lot for fifteen minutes in search of a space conveniently located near the mall entrance rather than walk for three minutes exposed to the elements. Their homes must be temperature-controlled so precisely that the impact of the change of seasons is more conceptual than experiential. A few times I've had new neighbors move-in nearby whose first order of business was to annihilate every tree on their property. Trees are just too messy, dropping blossoms, fruit and leaves willy-nilly on the ground. Even the grass must be groomed to offer the perfect carpet of pristine greenery around their homes. Gallons of pesticides, weed-killers and artificial fertilizers are spread over properties to safeguard against the intrusion of crabgrass, dandelions and slugs (and somehow, almost magically, these chemicals never turn up in their drinking water). If a bear is spotted at a local park... if a coyote is seen prowling the neighborhood... if a garter snake suns itself in the rose garden, it must be eliminated. Nature is simply too uncomfortable, too aesthetically unpleasing, too unpredictable and too threatening to be tolerated. 

The British Romantics (particularly the Lake Poets) and the American Transcendentalists felt God's presence in Nature. Only by escaping the imperfect influence of Man to experience the unspoiled, pristine pathways of the natural world could an individual truly become one with the Supreme Being.

“In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, – no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”                                      - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being an atheist, I surely don't commune with any divinity, Christian or otherwise, while hiking in a forest, climbing a mountain or tracing the shore of a river; though seeing the grand diversity and aesthetic completeness of the natural world, I can understand why some men and women, under the influence of a religious fervor, might be inspired to feel the presence of the object of their veneration while experiencing the unsullied, majestic perfection of the wilderness.

So I guess Nature with a capital N can mean a lot of different things to people. I recognize one's response to Nature is purely personal. I will hold on to my affection for the outdoors and freely permit others to embrace differing opinions (though, perhaps with a dash of bigotry, I assert that with just a little exposure most folk would readily convert to my way of thinking). The trajectory of my own life didn't predispose me to my intense appreciation of Nature. As stated earlier, I spent my first twenty years living in what has become known as “suburban sprawl”, a vast, homogeneous expanse of one-family houses, small businesses, schools and shopping malls. Then I moved to New York City where I lived for a decade. And we're not talking about the crystalline perfection of urban Manhattan but the dirty, run-down neighborhoods of the outer boroughs. When my wife and I moved to the Hudson Valley about 75 miles north of the city, I got my first taste of what it's like living in a more rural area with nearby parks, forests, mountains, lakes, farms, orchards and simply undeveloped land. Our home is situated on about 2 acres of land (mostly wooded), a plot that would have accommodated 8 houses in the hometown of my childhood. But, even when once settled in our new digs, we were unable to fully investigate the extensive resources around us because we were raising young children who were incapable, both physically and patience-wise, of enduring strenuous, long hikes. All the same, our kids were accompanying my wife and me on regular hikes, just reasonably tame, of short duration and on fairly level ground, and our youngest son when only a few days old was already on the trails with us, albeit in a fancy all-terrain stroller. When our boys hit their teen years, the time had come to explore much longer and challenging routes, and I would plan several extensive hikes during the warmer seasons. The longest by far was a 17 mile hike on the Appalachian Trail, which left us exhausted and sore for days. From then on, the flood gates were open, and I now search out opportunities for ever longer, more scenic and demanding hikes. I often make my treks with my wife and whichever of our kids (who are all adults now) is available, but I am just as likely to go it alone. There have been many times I've been on solo hikes on unpopular trails when I haven't seen another human the entire day and recognize that should I become incapacitated it might be days before someone would stumble upon me. That's part of the mystique. I love to feel totally immersed in Nature and insulated from the wider world. I know of no other activity which imparts such a feeling of peace and contentment. But to be honest, I've never hiked in a location where getting lost would mean anything worse than an inconvenience, perhaps involving a few miles of backtracking. And I am truly risk-averse, avoiding extreme conditions, slippery footing, precarious ledges and unstable slopes. I am seeking pleasure, not thrills.

I recently read Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, a book that describes the author's solo hiking journey through the Cevennes Mountains in France in 1878. One entry struck me powerfully:

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more preoccupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To hold a pack upon a pack-saddle against a gale out of the frozen north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and compose the mind, And when the present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future?”

If I am interpreting Stevenson correctly, I believe he is talking about the “escape” which undertaking a difficult excursion provides the adventurer. I do find that the petty concerns of my daily existence melt away when I'm on the trail. It's impossible to get caught up in negative thinking when out hiking. The faulty plumbing, the pesky neighbors, the car's squealing brakes, dental imperatives, runaway inflation and the insane political situation all dissipate within a cloud of pollen and swarming gnats. The mind unclenches. Just taking in oxygen becomes paramount. On the trail, I become aware of the beating of my heart and the burn in my muscles. My eyes, my brain and my limbs coordinate their talents to ensure that an errant footstep doesn't end in disaster. The state of the weather (the temperature, the winds, cloud cover and precipitation) takes on a new urgency and must be dealt with efficiently and effectively. Navigating a complex labyrinth of trails, often poorly marked, becomes the challenge, and a scenic vista becomes the reward. It's truly amazing how freeing a long hike in the woods can be.

And though I eschew the constant barrage of medical advice, gadgets, cure-alls and general quackery that assail me throughout my daily peregrinations, I have compiled a few broad rules of my own to keep me healthy. In no particular order, they are: 1) eat a varied diet, 2) don't get too fat, 3) consume sugars and salts in moderation, 4) drink red wine (it's like roto-rooter for the blood vessels), 5) avoid medications if at all possible, 6) stress is a killer, and 7) regular cardiovascular exercise is critical. As far as number seven goes: I don't lift weights; I don't run on a treadmill; I don't have a gym membership; my knees won't permit me to jog anymore; so hiking and bicycling are the only activities I engage in that give my heart and lungs a genuine workout. Hiking may not be a miraculous panacea, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Oh, and at my wife's instigation, I began recording my hiking mileage starting on St. Patrick's Day 2023. I found that over a one year period I hiked 757.32 miles. Traveling as the crow flies, that would bring me from my home in the Hudson Valley to Lexington, Kentucky. I suppose that's pretty good – definitely not mind-blowing but I could be doing a hell of a lot worse.

And, now, getting back to where this long, meandering entry began, I return to my appreciation of Nature with a capital N. Thus far, I believe I've explored the reasons why I am out on the trails, forever looking for new locations to experience and forever challenging my aging body to perform adequately. But, besides the mental and health benefits I've addressed, my obsession has resulted in a few tangible commodities that I can share with others: my photographs and artwork.

Regarding my photography, I have a few thoughts. I don't consider myself a big-league photographer because I lack a high level of technical expertise and don't own top-of-the-line equipment, which certainly makes a big difference in results. But I do take my photography very seriously, attempting to fully master the features of those cameras I do possess and applying my general artistic know-how to frame and properly expose a picture. Before there was such a thing as social media, I took pictures for my own benefit, to use as resources for my artwork and to record occasions I might otherwise forget. When out hiking, I particularly liked having the capacity to capture my perception of my surroundings and to memorialize my personal relationship with Nature. Though I lived in a fairly rural area in those days, I worked five days per week in a somewhat stressful job in New York City, and, at times during my workday, just as a mental balm, I would open up on my computer a few photos I took on my most recent hike. Honestly, doing this helped to assert a certain balance on many a crazy day.

Once the advent of social media permitted me to share my photos with others, my objectives in recording my experiences on the trail multiplied manyfold. My pictures, now posted online to a wider audience, have become a tool to elucidate others as to resources available in our surrounding area and for me personally serve as comprehensive documentation of my own activities, as of this writing going back more than a decade. I can now usually research when I made a specific hike, who (if anyone) accompanied me, what the weather was like, how long the hike took me, the mileage covered and my overall impression of the hike. That's extremely useful. In my photos, I hope to capture some truly stunning scenes that, at least for me, impart an intense emotional impression, maybe convey a tangible feeling of the season, the temperature, the humidity, the terrain. I take pleasure in recording detail: a stone, a leaf, blossoms, insects, birds, small critters. And I find heading out to the most inaccessible places at the most inconvenient hours often results in the most powerful images. Hopefully I can bring these facets of my own experiences to others unwilling to try or physically incapable of tackling a serious hike.

Over the years, I've taken literally tens of thousands of photos, far too many to attempt sampling here, so I've limited myself to a very small selection of the images I've compiled over the last twelve months and interspersed them with the preceding paragraphs I've written thus far.

As I've stated in several earlier blog entries, I am primarily a figure painter, though I do dabble occasionally in other genres. Considering my intense connection with Nature, you might expect me to be a landscape artist, but for me the human form has always asserted itself as the perfect vehicle for addressing my concerns. That said, I have over the years tackled the infrequent landscape, the results being inconsistent and often unsatisfying. I believe I struggle with landscape because my artistic strength is to bestow preternatural focus on my subject, eliciting almost invisible detail and subtleties painstakingly from form, and landscape seems to assert an “allover” approach. Before writing this entry, I chose from my hoard a few of the landscapes I've executed over my career, the earliest painted during my undergraduate studies, and was surprised at how many of them include evidence of the presence of humans, especially since, when hiking, I strive to leave the world of man far behind and hope to fabricate the illusion that I am immersed deeply in an untarnished, virgin wilderness. Most likely, my dependence on man-made elements in my landscapes is a symptom of my need to apply focus somewhere in a work and also serves as a crutch to establish a satisfying composition. Below I've culled a handful of oil paintings, prints, watercolors and gouaches from my very limited collection of landscapes.

Gerard Wickham - Sunken Meadow - 1983

Gerard Wickham - Birches, Moosehead Lake - 1987

Gerard Wickham - Greece - 1988

Gerard Wickham - Searsport, Maine - 1991c

Gerard Wickham - Manomet - 1994

Gerard Wickham - Landscape with Storm Clouds - 1997

Gerard Wickham - Horseneck Beach -2003

Gerard Wickham - View from Tymor - 2003

Gerard Wickham - Furnace Pond - 2004

Gerard Wickham - Minnewaska - 2018

Gerard Wickham - Poets' Walk - 2018

Gerard Wickham - Tymor in Autumn - 2018

Gerard Wickham - Deep Woods, Tymor - 2021

Gerard Wickham - White Birch Pond - 2021

This final image is a large watercolor I painted at a cabin my wife and I rented last year outside of Cooperstown, New York. To be totally accurate, I painted half of it from the cabin's porch, and then recognizing I'd never complete it during our stay, I took a series of photos hoping to successfully capture the impression that initially motivated me to tackle this subject. So I was forced to finish this work at our home. Luckily, I had nailed down the entire composition while we were still at the cabin and had only to flesh out those details not yet fully realized.

Gerard Wickham - From Betty's Cabin - 2023

I recognized even when just starting on this work that it represented a departure from the norm for me. I don't believe that in all my many years of painting landscapes I had ever included a car in one of my works. Sure I might depict a quaint house, a viewing platform or a rustic post and rail fence in a painting or drawing, but a car was something different: essentially a high-tech, factory-produced, gas-guzzling, pollution-generating gadget. I couldn't imagine including the image of a car in one of my landscapes, which generally celebrated raw Nature. In this work, not only was I aiming to portray our family's Dodge Caravan but it was going to be a central element of the composition. And, instead of being troubled by the intrusion of this vehicle in my artwork, I actually felt affection for this old workhorse that we've kept running for nearly 16 years now. I saw the car as a tool, a beast of burden, a refuge, even a pseudo life-raft should the need arise. I could genuinely apprehend a certain beauty in this rusted-out wreck.

And this shift in perception got me to thinking. For most of my life, Nature represented for me an unattainable perfection, an elusive destination that was always beyond reach. The world of Man with its complications, obligations and homeliness was the real world. It was omnipresent and inescapable. I guess the onus of securing an education and earning a living meant my connection with the world of man was going to rule paramount in my life. But because my routines and activities had undergone a seismic shift in recent years, my mindset had experienced a similar change. Being retired for several years, I was no longer tied to a stressful job that imposed on me hours of train travel to a distant metropolis. I was free to gratify my own inclinations spontaneously and soon discovered many locations that permitted me to engage with Nature intimately. The rhythms of my life slowed. The structure of my day followed a sane pattern based on my needs and desires. At the same time, the world of man no longer seemed so sinister. Time had ceased to be a precious commodity, and I surrendered the perceived obligation to cram several different activities into every given moment. I could address one goal at a time, without the TV droning in the background or a CD playing. I could sit in silence. I drove slower and stopped getting incensed at the foibles of my fellow drivers. Instead of becoming antisocial once retired (as I had expected), I started to engage more readily with cashiers, mechanics, librarians, repairmen, park rangers, fishmongers, fellow hikers and former coworkers and truly enjoyed the human connection. I'm still me – maybe just me high on a gallon of chamomile tea. I guess I would say that I have achieved a balance between the world of Nature and the world of Man.

So I suppose it's taken me a lifetime to achieve this healthier relationship with my environment. As I've said, a big part of my change in perspective results from my move to a more rural area and my release from the responsibilities of employment. That's great for me, but for most people, options can be extremely limited. Wouldn't it be far better if city planners and zoning boards actually intelligently designed our cities and towns to stifle overdevelopment and safeguard our natural habitat? Maybe our governments could resist the intense pressure to open up new land to housing and industry. It is conceivable that local officials might be honest and courageous enough to stop rubber-stamping proposals detrimental to the communities they supposedly serve. And perhaps as a people we can begin to prioritize quality of life over financial profit. I honestly believe that, if we could live in more balanced environments, our thinking and behavior would naturally become more balanced.

As always, I encourage readers to comment here. If you would prefer to comment privately, you can email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.

Entry - 1.13.24

I first painted the author Jeffrey Ford back in 2004. The portrait was “constructed” from many sources, including some poorly lit snapshots which I took in a pizzeria of the unsuspecting but amiably accommodating writer. In the painting I was hoping to capture the strange realism embraced by many Northern Renaissance artists, particularly Hans Holbein. Once completed, I built a heavy frame for the painting and painted on it in spiraling, gold lettering a quote from Hermann Hesse. Two things troubled me about the finished work. The lighting in which I had photographed Jeff was extremely inadequate, leaving form poorly expressed and providing little contrast and nuance. So I embellished as best I could. I was also dissatisfied with a crow included in the work. I knew that its dark plumage had the potential to dominate my composition and tried to tamp down the blacks in my palette, but somehow I lost control during execution. The crow was too weighty and didn't integrate successfully with the subtly rendered details of other components of the work. I wouldn't call the finished painting a failure, but I definitely hoped to get another crack at Jeff sometime in the future.

Gerard Wickham - Jeffrey Ford, detail - 2004

Gerard Wickham - Jeffrey Ford - 2004

My opportunity came eighteen years later in September of 2022. Jeff and his wife Lynn were passing though our area during one of their many peregrinations and stopped by our home to visit for a few days. During their stay, I asked Jeff if he would pose for some photographs and, as is his wont, he obliged readily. This time I was going to get it right. I set up complex studio lighting in a stuffy alcove and had Jeff pose in front of a multi-paneled, wood grained door. It was a hot day, there was no ventilation and the lights were raining heat upon us, but I kept taking photos, at least fifty of them. Throughout this ordeal, Jeff never grumbled or whined. Afterwards I was so confident that I had got exactly what I needed that I didn't even look at the photos until well after Jeff and Lynn had left. Imagine my shock when I transferred the photographs to my computer and found that every image was totally out-of-focus. I tried editing the photos to salvage an image or two, but eventually I had to recognize that they were completely unusable. What the hell had happened? I was pretty sure my Nikon DSLR had died. It actually took me weeks to figure out that the lens was the problem and not the camera. Turns out my lens had an autofocus motor in it that must have conked out. What? Lenses have motors?

I was at an impasse, and rather than address the problem I chose to ignore it. At that time, I was painting an extremely large figurative work which would take me many months to complete, so I felt no urgency to make preparations for Jeff's portrait. Jeff lives several hundred miles away, so I couldn't ask him to drop in for another try. It was slowly dawning on me that I was going to have to ask Lynn, who is a very talented photographer, to take a series of photos of Jeff. She would have done a great job, but I look for very specific things in my source photographs and rued surrendering control to someone else (even with my providing obsessively detailed direction). So again I did nothing. By the summer of 2023, work was winding down on my current project, and I knew my explanatory phone call to Jeff and Lynn would have to be made soon if I wanted to avoid a long period of inactivity between paintings. That's when I found out that Jeff and Lynn would be traversing the Hudson Valley once again, an event as infrequent as a total solar eclipse or the Mets winning the World Series. Eureka! Deus ex machina! etc. etc.

So, in a nutshell, Jeff and Lynn stayed with us a second time and Jeff agreed to pose once again, never offering even a word of censure regarding my highly probable incompetence. This time I positioned Jeff beside a sliding glass door to his right and an incandescent light source to his left. I draped a bright blue blanket behind him, hoping that its intense coloration would infuse his features with form-defining reflections. I used two cameras, a point and shoot model and my DSLR, now equipped with a 35mm fixed lens. I wasn't taking any chances this time. I'd take two series of photographs.

I instructed Jeff to adopt a very specific facial expression, one I thought exemplified his personality faithfully, and he complied effortlessly. I, of course, took a million shots. To rule out any possibility of camera shake, I used a tripod and took my photos with a ten second delay. Every so often I noticed Jeff pulling strange faces in the interlude between my pressing the shutter release and the camera taking the timed photos. I asked him what he was doing. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I'm mixing it up.” It's your funeral, I thought, and continued with my work.

Afterwards, I examined the results of our efforts, and on this occasion nearly every photograph I took was successful. I examined the shots, including those in which Jeff deliberately distorted his features, and came to realize that my portrait had become a triptych. So weeks later, I brought a flash drive holding three photos to Staples and instructed the confused technician to print each image several times, sometimes deliberately over or under exposing them. She did as I requested, but she didn't like it one bit.

When I painted this first image, the one where Jeff actually adopted the expression I wanted, I pinned multiple versions of the photograph around the gessoed panel on which I painted and referred to each of them as I worked. My goal was to finish this first panel before Christmas, and I achieved this objective with a week or so to spare. Setting arbitrary goals is a tool I employ to coerce myself into being more productive, maybe squeezing in extra sessions and extending my time in the studio. I believe I got from this painting what I wanted: a concise portrayal of a specific personality executed using fairly loose brushwork and a heightened palette. My intention, should my focus and stamina endure, is to paint two additional versions of Jeff and construct some sort of framing mechanism to display all three panels. As I complete them, I'll post the results of my future efforts.

Gerard Wickham - Jeffrey Ford - 2023

As always, I encourage readers to comment here. If you would prefer to comment privately, you can email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.

March 30, 2024 Update:

Weeks ago I completed the second panel of my multi-paneled portrait of Jeffrey Ford. It took me about two months to paint this image. The beginning was rough. I repainted the same small sections over and over again, never quite able to achieve what I wanted, never satisfied that my tonalities and brushwork would mesh with those of the previous panel. After several sessions of painting, I finally felt that my approach was coming together. Once over that hump, the rest of the endeavor proceeded efficiently. By the way, I left the first panel stacked aside while I painted the second; I relied mostly on my memory to determine my course. Since I completed this painting, I left it on my easel to dry while I waited for the weather to improve enough for an outdoor photoshoot. My intention now is to wait a few more weeks before tackling the final panel, maybe catch up on some long neglected writing projects.

Gerard Wickham - Jeffrey Ford - 2024

Entry - 9.16.23

Before leaving his job, my father had become a bit dour and subdued, more inwardly focused and less willing to engage actively with others. His pre-retirement personality didn't emerge overnight but instead evolved over years. The stress of work, financial worries and health issues certainly contributed to his less than rosy weltanschauung. My father belonged to the “Greatest Generation”, the soldiers who had fought in WWII, and these veterans did not vent about their emotions and anxieties, instead choosing to stay silent and shoulder their troubles as best they could. And my father was definitely even less talkative than most of his male peers. I can recall a number of occasions when I had messed up terribly and got caught red-handed violating my parents' rules. Days would pass while I awaited their response, tension building with each passing day, until finally my father would address my offense. First he would recount what he had been informed of my activities in one or two short sentences and then ask if that synopsis was accurate. When I'd admit that it was true, he would look sad, never making eye contact with me, and quietly ask, “Well, that isn't going to happen again, is it?”, to which I'd sheepishly reply, “No, it won't.” End of discussion. It was far worse than if he had harangued me for hours... and far more effective too.

His innate reticence had been clearly compounded by his recent experiences at work. His last boss was a high-strung and ambitious megalomaniac who crafted his management style on the conduct of Mussolini. He would sarcastically pester my father about retirement, making it obvious that he wanted him out of the office. Even when my father was sixty-five years old, he still needed to work an additional year before the mortgage on the family home was paid off; leaving employment before satisfying that loan was an impossibility. Also, after over three decades with his company, my father had been granted a private office in which to work, but this boss took that away and converted the space into a conference room – a humiliating blow for my dad. Surely his boss's most egregious crime occurred the first time my father was in the hospital undergoing stomach ulcer treatment. During his stay at the hospital, my father received a visit from his boss and another coworker, and, even though my father had been absent from work for only a short period of time, his boss felt compelled to inform him that an extended leave would mean that the bureau would have to take possession of his company car. Though I believe that current medical thinking may contradict this, back in the eighties, it was the consensus that stress, if not the direct cause of ulcers, greatly exacerbated their symptoms. To threaten a patient undergoing treatment for ulcers with extreme consequences seemed particularly unconscionable.

When we were kids, my father would have gotten up, eaten his breakfast, bathed and exited the bathroom before we had stumbled out of our bedrooms at about 6:30 am. He warmed up his car quite a while as I would groggily ladle down a bowl of cereal at our kitchen table, then he was off to work. He invariably returned home promptly at 6:00 pm and joined his family for dinner. In my parents' bedroom he had installed a small, blonde wood desk at which he would plug away at outstanding work files on his evenings and weekends. Looking on as an inexperienced child, his schedule seemed unacceptably oppressive, and, even toward the end of his career when his children had graduated from college and were working, that schedule hadn't changed.

Another challenge my father faced at the end of his career was an appreciable worsening of his eyesight, eventually necessitating cataract surgery on one of his eyes. After the operation, his pupil, no longer round, was now shaped like a keyhole, he was required to wear a contact lens in the impaired eye and, honestly, his eyesight didn't improve noticeably. His night vision was particularly bad. When picking up my sister and me at the train station in the evenings, he would drive quite slowly, hugging the right side of the road to allow other cars to pass him. We worried that he might inadvertently hit a bicyclist or pedestrian obscured in the dark shadows at the road's edge. But driving was a critical component of his job. Hanging up his keys, at that time, was not a possibility.

So clearly my father's last years of employment weren't easy for him. Instead of coasting into his golden years, he was struggling against adversity and bearing up as best he could against the assaults of an amoral and ambitious supervisor. When during my undergraduate years I painted my only oil portrait of him, I pictured him with eyes concealed by reflections and I inserted behind him an invented background of crisscrossing horizontal and vertical studs (meant to convey a feeling of complex and exacting structure).

Gerard Wickham - Portrait of My Father - 1981

I'm certain that I've unintentionally presented thus far in this entry a distorted, uni-dimensional portrait of my father and a far too harrowing account of his last years of employment. He truly was not “besieged” during those days. I would say that the hardships I've described above certainly colored his outlook, making him more introspective and aloof, but his daily routine remained unchanged and he plodded through his days impassively. He continued to enjoy the support of his wife and children, often participating in family events and visits on his weekends. Regardless of whatever changes I observed in my father, he remained a faithful, kind, quiet-spoken and helpful parent.

So I guess this is where my story begins...

It was January of 1987, and I had made the train ride from Brooklyn to Suffolk County, Long Island to flee the noise and bustle of the city, visit with family and, most importantly, welcome a new addition to the family: my sister's newborn son. It was cold, at least for temperate Long Island, and a few inches of crusty snow carpeted the ground. The family home was situated on a quarter acre parcel in a very suburban development, and returning there always awakened a host of memories for me. The place was now both comfortably familiar and foreign at the same time. I had been living in a Brooklyn apartment with my girlfriend and working in Manhattan for a while now, and I always felt just a little out of place when returning home.

Studying the contents of the refrigerator, I asked my mother what the heavy cream was for. She replied, “Oh, your dad's doctor has him drinking that whenever his ulcers act up. It's supposed to coat his stomach.” “Does it work?” I asked. She just shrugged her shoulders. It was disheartening to learn that my father was still experiencing discomfit from his ulcers. I had hoped that his symptoms would abate once he escaped the anxieties of employment.

My father had been retired for about a year then, and already I could see positive changes in his personality. He was alert and talkative and definitely more relaxed. He frequently laughed, and I was seeing within him the father of my childhood who would greet me with an upbeat “Hiya!” when he came up the walkway after returning from the office. I was shocked to learn that he had begun to patronize the town's senior center. My father was NOT a participator! I remember my mother telling me a few years earlier that my father had belonged to a local volleyball league when they first moved out on the Island about three decades ago, and I almost fell over. My father was not athletic, and he certainly did not belong to things. This new sociability was a very promising development. Considering these changes, I had reason to conclude that retirement was working out for him and could only anticipate further gains to come.

Well after dinner that night, I decided that I wanted to go out and experiment with my new camera, a Nikon FG-20 recently purchased in order to make high quality slides of my artwork. So I headed out the door into the darkness with a camera bag slung over my shoulder and a tripod in hand intending to take long exposure, naturally lit photos at various locations in my hometown. I remember that the ice-encrusted snow made a fantastic reflective surface that picked up distant, dim houselights and the ghostly glimmer of the moon and I would lie on my belly behind my tripod hoping to catch the effect.

After a few hours at my endeavors, I arrived home sometime after 1:00 AM to find the house brightly lit and still filled with activity. This was unexpected, and I passed warily through our kitchen's backdoor. My mother rushed to me and explained that my father's ulcers were bleeding badly but he refused to go to the hospital. I found my father in his pajamas and bathrobe standing in our home's sole bathroom. He was pale and looking weak. I stated that I was going to drive him to the hospital immediately, but he wouldn't budge. “I'm fine. I don't need the hospital,” he insisted. I tried ineffectually to persuade him, but he clearly felt that he could weather this storm without intervention. My mother pulled me aside and instructed me to “make him go”. This contradicted my firm belief at that time in the fundamental right of the individual to determine his or her own fate - a belief I still hold today. “He'll let me know when it's time,” I assured her. We lowered the lights and went reluctantly to bed. I kept my clothes on, stretched out on the living room sofa and covered myself with a quilt, ready to transport my father to the hospital in a flash. I hadn't slept a wink when an hour or two later my father crept into the room and quietly notified me that he was ready to go.

While waiting in the emergency room to see a doctor, my father suggested to me that I should go home and get some sleep. Although he was lucid and clearheaded, I thought it best that he have someone with him (even if just for company) and indicated that I would stick around. After another few minutes, he turned to me and said, “Look, it's going to be a while before I see a doctor, and, after that, they're going to admit me. There's really no point in your waiting. In the meantime, I'll just try to get some rest here.” At that moment, I was conflicted but eventually succumbed to the logic of what he was saying and the exhaustion I was feeling. I agreed to go home. Not that it really mattered much one way or the other, but I've always regretted that decision.

My father's prediction was accurate. He was admitted to the hospital, and, unlike on his previous stay there when they had treated him non-surgically, the doctors this time determined that part of his stomach should be removed. Within a day or two, the operation was performed... successfully, and the next day my father was recuperating in a room waiting until he was well enough to be discharged. I visited him then.

He was in a regular room, shared with one other patient. I recall vividly the pastel-colored walls, the artificial wood-grained veneers on the furniture, the plastic accouterments, the high-tech beds. I was happy to find my father looking well and was relieved to think that, his problems being behind him, he could return home and live unencumbered by persistent illness. Though a little weak, he was alert and cheerful. After a few minutes of the usual hospital visit palaver, he stroked his chin and winced. “Hey, could you shave me? This stubble is itching me terribly.” I readily consented, and he directed me to a cabinet beside his bed in which I found all the necessary gear to perform this small chore.

While he held a basin on his chest, I lathered him up, being careful not to get shaving cream on the hospital linens. Once I applied the razor to his cheek, I was immediately aware that this shaving job was going to be a challenge. My father's beard was thick and coarse, the feel of his skin akin to that of sandpaper. Though in my late twenties, my facial hair was still thin and downy, easily dispatched during a quick shave. But I was undeterred. I scraped away at his face, determined not to inadvertently nick him. I painstakingly applied myself to this task, regularly changing my position to achieve the optimal angle to apply the razor. I lifted his nose to get at his mustache. I asked him to raise his chin, so I could focus on his neck. I switched from one side of his bed to the other. I loomed over him. I scrunched down below him. Throughout this long ordeal, my father cooperated patiently, never losing his cool, recognizing that I was honestly trying my best. Finally I announced that my mission had been completed. I grabbed a small towel, wiped the residual lather from his face and examined the results of my efforts. I was aghast. He looked exactly the same as before I had started. I couldn't believe it. I must have held the razor at the wrong angle, or maybe I didn't press hard enough on it. Whatever the reason, I had clearly failed to accomplish anything. A tiny giggle bubbled up from inside me, but I struggled to suppress it. The more I tried to contain it, the more the giggle insisted it had to be free. I squeezed my lips together tightly, my face flushing bright red with my efforts. At first, a few hiccupy gasps escaped from me, but they soon escalated into something very loud between a keen and a groan, what I imagine the call of a lovesick moose might sound like. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I glanced over at my father's roommate to see him investigating our activities with a terrified expression on his face, which, of course, only heightened the hilarity. Eventually, I could contain myself no longer and erupted into a fit of laughter which literally lasted several minutes. When I had calmed down and wiped the tears from my eyes, I explained to my perplexed father what had happened and offered gamely to give it another try. “No,” he replied, “I think it's just fine. Really.”

From there, it all went downhill in a long series of internal bleeding episodes necessitating multiple, ineffective operations and inevitably concluding with some lethal hospital infection... all within a three month period. Every time I came to visit, my father was hooked up to an additional piece of equipment. Eventually his room in the Intensive Care Unit, where he now resided, resounded with the wheezing, beeping, clicking, buzzing and screeching of machinery, monitors and alarms. Unable to communicate due to a tracheotomy, my father expressed with his eyes what he couldn't with words, and his eyes seemed to be saying, “Get me the hell out of here!” One afternoon, I entered the hospital along with my brothers to visit our father, and we were ambushed by a doctor we'd never seen before. He was handsome and slick, wore a dashing bow tie and spoke in a soft, conspiratorial voice. The gist of his little speech was to inform us that our father had received excellent care and the hospital, doctors and nurses had done everything possible to treat him and make him comfortable. He really couldn't say enough positive things about the magnificent performance of the staff there. We just stared back totally perplexed. At the end, he asked if we had any questions, and, when we had none, he trotted off never to be seen again. We looked at each other, knowing that now all hope was lost, and one of us said (I really can't remember who), “I guess they're worried about getting sued.”

At the end, the doctors informed us that they could not operate again. As a last-ditch effort, they would try a robust infusion of Vitamin K which might help to stem the internal bleeding which had plagued him since his initial operation. Strangely enough, it worked. But at that point his health was completely compromised and his body beset with infection. My father died near the end of March.

I believe people process loss in different ways. Some people simply collapse, disassociating from reality, surrendering completely to their grief. Some people may find the whole death ritual to be cathartic – you know, the demands of making arrangements, meeting with funeral directors, getting dressed up, attending religious services, organizing meals, and gathering with friends and family. At a bare minimum, addressing all those responsibilities provides a distraction. My family tends to be a bit pragmatic, objective and dispassionate. I recall that during the weeks before and after my father's death, my siblings and I gained some comfit from engaging in a lot of finger-pointing. Of course, we couldn't help but wonder what would have resulted if my father had received that Vitamin K infusion even before the first determination to operate was made. We analyzed every decision the doctors made, finding fault with most of them. If only they hadn't... Why didn't they try that earlier... Shouldn't they have... Don't get me wrong, a lot of pretty big blunders seemed to have been made in my father's treatment, but I also believe that we lacked the expertise to productively evaluate the judgment of the medical professionals. We even questioned the choices my father had made: why hadn't he switched doctors... why hadn't he been more aggressive in addressing his ulcers... why did he hold off seeking treatment during this last episode? It took me years to recognize that our bodies have a shelf-life, and often, despite our tweaking and fiddling, nothing we do is going to extend or shorten that shelf-life by much. It's reality. I know death is a hard thing to face. We really want to believe that by being proactive, by staying on top of all the latest medical guidance, by making wise choices and by heeding our bodies' warning signals we can put off our ultimate departures – well, let's face it, perpetually. Such thinking is absurd but very reassuring. I guess we all like to indulge in the fantasy that we're in control of our destinies.

Once all the post-death ceremonies were performed and my family had convened multiple times, informally and in various assortments, to lament, to agonize, to analyze, to criticize and to, basically, vent, it was time for me and my girlfriend to head back to our apartment in Brooklyn and for us both to return to our jobs. In my experience the real mourning begins once you reestablish your everyday life... when dark thoughts creep in during your daily subway ride or in the midst of watching a TV show or while lying awake in bed at night. Strangely, the “what ifs” that had so dominated my family's thinking earlier began to diminish and were replaced by a vague realization that had been troubling me throughout my father's decline. I felt that at some point during his weeks-long hospital stay my father had been stripped of his “humanness”... that he had been transformed into an object (like, let's say, an automobile undergoing extensive repairs, disassembled to the point of unrecognizability, its parts strewn across the garage floor)... that his emotions, his feelings, his discomfit, his pain were insignificant and only the successful outcome of his treatment mattered... that we, his family, as healthy, functioning individuals still merited an attention, a consideration and the right to make choices that he had somehow relinquished – and that was the case even though he remained conscious and aware throughout most of his ordeal. And though fully cognizant of what was transpiring, we, his family, were completely helpless and incapable of intervening. This disturbed and terrified me.

As is still the case today, back then, whenever I needed to address or resolve some distressing occurrence in my life I turned to art. Several weeks after my father's death, I decided to make a linoleum block print documenting his last days at the hospital. Though for compositional purposes I resorted to some distortion and rearranging, the print accurately depicts each of the many mechanical devices that sustained my father's life at that time – so accurately that when I study the print today it brings back vivid memories of those painful days. My goal was to so prioritize the gadgets and mechanisms enveloping my father that his own presence would be diminished, nearly erased. After cutting the block, I tried printing it in several colors. On one occasion, having just pulled an image in black, I got lazy. I examined the block and determined that there was very little residual ink remaining on the surface, that all the grooves I had cut were pretty much free of ink. Just to be cautious I wiped off the block with a paper towel. In truth, I should have cleaned the block with turpentine, washed it with soap and water and then waited for it to be thoroughly dry before making a print in a different color. But, like I said, I got lazy. My next printing was to be in bright red, hopefully to elicit a feeling of alarm, peril, blood. I inked the block, applied it to a sheet of good quality rag paper and, not having access to a press, simply rubbed the back of the print with a spoon until I was certain that the paper had made absolute contact with the entirety of the block's surface, the whole process taking quite a while. When I peeled the paper from the block, I was immediately dismayed. The black ink, the remaining amount of which I thought negligible, actually asserted itself forcefully, dulling the bright red ink and creating an inconsistent mottled effect. I groaned, ruing the time I had wasted trying to cut corners. I put the print aside to dry, cleaned the block and quit for the day, expecting to properly execute the print the next day.

The following morning, I examined the red print again. The infusion of a small amount of black ink permitted the structure of the print to pronounce itself more clearly than if I had used only red, which would have pulsated on the page. I also liked the surprising grainy effect the black residue contributed to the print and how the darker hues emerged irregularly, providing a more nuanced, complex component to a composition which basically consisted of a series of strong horizontals and verticals. My incompetent accident actually satisfied me, and I decided that the print was worth keeping. Ultimately, my thinking went beyond that. Instead of tolerating my clumsy mistake in one image, I deliberately recreated the effect in all future printings.

Gerard Wickham - My Father's Deathbed - 1987

I didn't quite know what to do with this print once it was completed. It seemed too personal to share with others. And it seemed to be too universal to be of interest to others. (Hasn't everyone experienced a similar loss of a loved one in a hospital setting?) Though this print has hung on the wall of my home for about thirty years, I believe it to be too grim for most people to tolerate on a daily basis. So you might think my whole endeavor to be fruitless. But I would disagree. During my schooling, I was trained to be a “fine artist”. As such I was encouraged by my instructors to put aside issues of affirmation and marketability and instead follow my own unique inclinations. That is the only true pathway to bringing about meaningful communication. To this day, I am so thankful to have had this central concept drilled into me throughout my years of higher education. So although My Father's Deathbed remains a challenging, troublesome companion, I have no regrets regarding its creation. In fact, after thirty six years, it asserts its presence far more tolerably (almost consolingly) than it did at the time of its execution. And as I grow older and must envision my own inevitable demise, I can appreciate that even as a young man I chose to attempt to represent the perspective of a fellow human succumbing to death while enmeshed in the apparatus of a well meaning yet incognizant medical establishment. At a minimum I'm satisfied that I cared enough to give it a try.

As always, I encourage readers to comment here. If you would prefer to comment privately, you can email me at gerardwickham@gmail.com.