The other day I mentioned that Dad set up to work wherever he found himself. In this photo (from Australia, so at some point between 1962 and 1969), he’s turned his kitchen table chair around so it faces his ‘easel’ - a coffee table covered with newspaper to protect the surface. Just off to the left, a baby chair of some sort - I suspect for my brother, Pete, who was born in Sydney in 1964.
I am surmising this because on the table my mother has spread some photo proofs (she probably had a darkroom going in some stuffy closet) and I think that top one, to the right of the spool of thread, is a photo I recall of my brother when he was perhaps a year or so old (possibly one from the following series).
The scene reveals other staple items in my parents’ lives - my mother’s handbag, cups of coffee, something to read, and always, the next canvas stretched and ready to go.
Perhaps because he often had to work in the middle of the action, Dad always listened to music, perhaps to drown out the distractions. Later, when he did have a studio of his own with a door, he still didn’t work in silence. One of his favourite singers was Edith Piaf and he listened to certain records (later, tapes, then online) over and over again. Sometimes, he cranked up a talk radio station or an audiobook, a feat I have always longed to be able to do myself while working. Alas, though I love to write in busy places (noisy coffee shops are my favourites), I can’t listen to a book while I’m writing - I suppose the parts of the brain required for the two tasks are too closely related.
Last year on my way to Portugal I took a slight detour via the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I managed to get hopelessly lost (not hard to do, it’s quite the complicated place) before finally finding Piaf’s grave. I was travelling with a small quantity of Dad’s ashes and a teeny pinch just may have wound up in with the potted flowers.
I’ll leave you with this classic…