Another Death

Yesterday an artist colleague died suddenly, relatively young. Although I was surprised, I also understood. He led one of those hard lives we traditionally allow creative people. We want our artists to experience life sharply, extremely, and give this information back to us in their work. And so these men and women are fragile emotionally and physically, and they sometimes die, like Heath Leger, before they should have.
But we don’t consciously choose these highes and lows, this non-stable lifestyle so different from the norm. Most of us can’t really help that we crave deep, often painful experiences. It feeds our work, and our work makes us hungry for new ways of being. Not all artists are like this, but many, including me, are.
(Another Martin Puryear sculpture at MOMA.)