What a wonderful but serendipity surprise to read that another missing Jacob Lawrence painting surfaced, again on the Upper West Side. The painting, Panel 28 from Struggle series. Like the first painting, found in the home of an elderly couple, the panel had been bought by a person who just liked it…who wasn’t a collector, or scholar, or artist, but who just loved the painting and wanted to have it.
I thought what joy … a feeling that any artist would experience that someone loved their work enough to own it not really knowing much about art or art theory, or technique. The kind of person any painter, including myself, would love to have discovered a painting, print, sculpture and just wanted it as decoration for their home.
Jacob Lawrence, I think would have been overjoyed and touched and moved. I certainly am.
Some years back a local café, now long closed, showed neighborhood artists’ work, letting them be displayed for 6 months at a time. One day I received a call from a woman who had been sitting under one of my still lives, having her daily latte and reading her paper. When the show was about to come down, she contacted me and said she needed that painting for her own home because she loved the feeling it gave her, mornings over her daily brew. She bought that painting and one other. I don’t have a record any more of her name, though I pass her building in the neighborhood frequently. I pause and imagine her enjoying her paper and coffee beneath my still life. The memory brings a moment of peace, and joy and affirmation that helps me return to my easel or drawing board or printmaking re-energized with a sense of purpose