ANDY'S LAST RIDE

ANDY'S LAST RIDE                    JUNE 13, 2012                          photo by elizabeth gorodon

As you know through my posts, I have been in New Orleans to be with my partner and her Father while he was ill with bone cancer.  The journey is now complete.  And this post is to honor a man, his life, and the journey of a family taking their last journey with their loved one.
Andy was from a generation of extraordinary people. He and my Mother were born in the same small township area in rural Southern Mississippi just with in a few short years of each other, thought they never knew each other growing up.  They lived through WW II and a great depression.  They were people who learned to depend on their own individuality and survival skills.  If they couldn't do it themselves, it wasn't going to get done.  They grew up on poor farms in a rural poverty stricken area, but both came out as extraordinary people with great strength of character. I admire them both, and recognize my generation did not quite get their strength of character. So this is a tribute to a wonderful man, a family's journey with pain and illness, and the trip we all take with our loved ones at some point.  But mostly it is a tribute to Andy, a man who chose to be there for his family, and a man who chose to have strength of character like cowboy heroes of old...Roy Rodgers and that ilk...the man with the white hat riding into the sunset.


Rise at 6:00 am
Ready himself for the day
with soldier like discipline
shave, shower, breakfast
off to the mall, his family waiting


a family of friends waiting for coffee and a day's greeting
conversation of the day's events, jokes, laughter, who is ill, who has died,
friendship bonded in daily caring and fending off aloneness


the days are made one by one,
with a smile, a hug, a joke, and a flirt
pretending you are young once again,
Boggy and McCall-ness, and hope of more,
of youth, of love, and worth and purpose


Sundays' church man walks down the isles,
a tred worn on carpet 50 years, collections taken,
salvation asked for, and faith shown not with pomp and circumstance,
but like an old coat worn and comfortable, lived in and known


Rock strong, this man, family caretaker, family provider, always there,
aways dependable, never giving up


now the time is waning and the afternoon light in long shadows, the last ride is upon him,
he mounts his steel pony, and heads in once last time to laugh with his friends, his mall family,
now it is his last, bravely so, he tilts his hat, and with great humor takes the road upon him.

How Artist translate complex human emotion in to Art

When we look at these different artists and how they portray grief and sorrow we can see they have achieved it different ways...Color, shape, texture, symbols, and line.  It can be done simply as Noors painting with flat images and a repetition of shape.  Andrey's painting of sorrow uses a realism, but also relies on color in the use of the variety of brown and dark tones.  The third picture relies on composition and line. Artists take our complex emotions and unsaid feelings and say with paint or clay or metal what we cannot say with words.

Sorrow by Noor Naqvi
 from google image

Disconsolate  Sorrow by Kurrenow Andrey
 from google image

Artist Unknown                                     from google image

Vincent Van Gogh                               Old Man Of Sorrow                               from google image

PICASSO, DEATH AND HUMAN SUFFERNING

Picasso was terribly effected by his friend Casagmas' death.  Casagmas was a Catalan artist and constant companion of Picasso in Paris. Casagmas committed suicide over a love affair gone awry. For Picasso it was the loss of a great personal friend at a young age.  

Pablo Picasso    Death of Casagmas  from google image

"Picasso continually attempted to exorcise the pain and guilt he experienced as a result of the death of Carles Casagemas; this struggle with mortality, human suffering, and pain was a constant theme throughout the continuing decades of Picasso's art. Many of his Blue Period works deal both directly and allegorically with these conflicts. Throughout his life, Picasso sought redemption from the issues of human mortality by creating a vast world of sexuality, strength, and virility. The specter of death, and his need for redemption and survival, haunted Picasso into his 90s." from Neurosurgery News

Pablo Picasso             La Mort de Casagmas
from google image

Picasso went into a deep depression after the death of his friend.  It was then he started painting with green and blue paint and his subject matter depicted mans struggle with mortality and suffering and pain. 


Picasso's Blue Period

A time depicting suffering

human suffering and depravity

La Vie                Pablo Picasso
from google image

Looking at death, suffering and pain in our lives is not easy.  Losing people when you are young and the promise of life is taken away so cruelly seems terribly unfair.  We cannot always reconcile these feelings within ourselves.  When a life is lost to suicide there is almost always a feeling that if I could have done something, if I could have reached out more, then I could have saved my friend.  Losing a loved one to violence leaves us often with a deep feeling of anger and bitterness.  How could anyone have done such a thing, how can people be so cruel and unfeeling? Death and suffering are never easy for any of us and yet we will all experience it at some point in our lives. 
Picasso takes his grief over his friends death and develops a language of symbols he uses over and over again the rest of his life.  The depression over his friends death also builds a deep compassion for suffering he sees in the human condition around him.  Picasso could have become bitter and angry, he could have remained in a severe depression, but instead he used the lesson of personal suffering into that of exploration of suffering for all humans.