Towards Eternity

There isn't a more appropriate day than this one, November 1st, to write this blog post...for it was exactly five years ago on this day that my dad died.

It simply wouldn't be possible in the span of a few paragraphs to do justice to the character that my father was.  Member of parliament, native rights advocate, Ontario human rights commissioner.  On a first name basis with all of the political powers of the day: Trudeau, Stanfield, Chretien, Turner, Clark.  Dad was an intellectual, rascal, drinker, dreamer, womanizer.  Reckless, irresponsible and funny. Never dull.  He died on All Saint's Day, and the irony of THAT would not have been lost on him. 
My Facebook post on that day featured the one and only painting I had ever done of him, and perhaps for that reason it's become the defining image for me of his passing.  
The painting was commissioned by my brother Gene in the spring of 2013 while our dad was still alive.  It's based on a photo he took of dad walking by Skaha Lake, BC, with his dog Taliban (dad always named his dogs based on what was in the headlines on the day he got the dog).
Gene actually sent me TWO pictures as reference, because he wanted me to replace the moving-away dog from the first picture with the facing-the-camera dog of the second.  And that simple suggestion completely transformed the mood of the painting for the better.
I try to never have things in my work that are without purpose, or placed in a way with disregard to how their positioning affects the mood of a piece.  Had I left Tally in her original positioning from picture one, then the painting would have lost much of its mystery.  It could easily be just a scene of a man following after his dog, end of story.  But the new positioning suggests a lot more.  There's a casualness to the relationship that implies this is a place they're in all the time.  Any urgency that might be read into the story of an owner pursuing his loose dog...is gone.  We're left with two beings...still connected...but following their own stars.  And the whole scene becomes something bigger than just an everyday story of "man retrieving his dog".  I also changed the angle of the sun so that it is sparkling on the water.  Now, it's like he's headed towards eternity.

As I get on in years myself, it becomes ever more obvious that I too will have my date with destiny.  That inevitability was gifted to me by my father in his usual brilliant way, and rather than being fearful, I'm the better for it.  It happened in a setting like this one, many years ago when I was 19 and Dad was 50.  We were walking by Lac Phillipe and I started to rib him about becoming an old man who wasn't keeping up with me, at that time in the flower of my youth. His response in regard to our respective physical states was "We're both on the same road...I'm just further ahead."

Indeed.  RIP Dad. 

Posted here are the two pictures sent to me by Gene, the altered version of the picture and the resulting painting.