Why I Didn't Draw Death and Dying by Dave Jaffe: Part One

   Why I Didn't Draw Death and Dying by Dave Jaffe: Part One.




          A few days ago my sister phoned me from the United States. "I'm getting a tumour taken out of my breast," she said. Now my sister assured me that the tumour wasn't dangerous. And her husband has e-mailed me that the operation was a success.
     Yet me sister's phone call got me thinking about death and dying. For all around me people my age are dying. Some like me are in their late seventies. Others, I note are way younger than I am.  Some are quite older. Still, very year about 50,000 Canadians pass away. No matter how optimistic I am I have to face the fact that my death looms on the horizon.
     "In the long run we'll all be dead," said the British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes died over 70 years ago. Now many of my favourte artists and writers like John Berger, Susan Sontag, Margaret Laurence, Linda Nochlin, Robert Hughes and Andy Warhol have all died. Soon I believe I'll be gone too.
       Every other day or so, I draw something or other. When my sister phoned me I was drawing pictures of trees using coloured pencils. After my sister's phone call I thought of drawing something different. Why, I thought, don't I draw or paint pictures of the dead or dying. Yet this was easier thought of than done.
    Now one man who's still around - I think - is the Toronto-based artist Michael Snow. I was reading his biography by James King during and after my sister phoned m. Snow is a multitalented artist. He has painted  pictures, sculpted, made films and played jazz on the piano. He in his nineties and was very active I'm told..
   "Many art starts when the artist is moved by other work," Snow told the art critic John Bentley Mays way back in 1984. Doing art, Snow said, "comes from the desire for originality based on the depth of what was important for you."  Snow is an incredibly original artist who's light years ahead of me in artistic ability. I'm just one of thousands of amateur artists who paint or draw as a hobby. Yet I did want to draw or paint as Snow said, what was important to me. My thoughts had become focused on death and dying which in recent years have been etched themselves into my brain.
      How would I do this. I didn't know. Still, I soon turned to the internet and googled for black and white photos on death and dying people. At least 17 pictures popped up and I told myself, "I'm in business." For the next  or three days I tried to draw from these photos. Yet in the end I gave up doing this. The whole process just depressed me no end. Now I'm drawing pictures of bottles using Michael Snow's abstract paintings as a takeoff point.
      Death is still waiting in the wings. I know this. Yet I'm in no rush to hurry it along. I'll stick to drawing bottles for now.