Time to Say Goodbye

oil and cold wax on wood panel, 30" x 30"

I’m someone who tends to see images in abstracts. Sometimes I don’t want that in my own paintings, so I cover them up. But often, I want them there; especially faces. This was particularly a propos for the painting I was working on at a time when it felt like death surrounded me – too many friends lost in too short a time. And then I happened upon an article from a year earlier in the Montreal Gazette, about a mysterious death in 1975 that, 48 years later, remains a cold case. It turned out that the person killed was someone who’d played a brief but deeply important part in my life during my first year of university. I played “Time to Say Goodbye”, the Andrea Bocelli duet with Sarah Brightman, while finishing the painting. When I stepped back to see what I’d done, the ghostly images, one by one by another and another and more, began to emerge. Naming the painting after the song felt absolutely right.