Bone Book Blog

A New Week, and a Painting That Stayed

A new week often brings plans — adjustments, repairs, small intentions. This one begins with a painting I made long before my son was born. I was 16, i remember that time well.

I painted it roughly 19 years before he arrived. By my standards now, it isn’t a good painting. The drawing was intentionally naïve, the logic loose, the decisions unrefined. I can see exactly where I was when I made it and i recall the sense of Matisse style inspiration that filled my young mind and spirit that drove my paintbrush.... at the time.

Those days, what I didn’t yet know, what I couldn’t yet resolve had to come later.

And yet i kept the painting. Now, 35 years later it is still here under a pile of other paintings in the studio.

It hung in our home throughout Simon's entire childhood. It hung there quietly, never explained, never repositioned, simply present while life moved around it. It absorbed years without comment — ordinary days, growing pains, laughter, fatigue. It became part of the background fabric of home.

You can see there is a tear in the painting at the base of the vase ill fix this and repost the touched up image. I have been given strict instructions not to change it.

Anyway.....where was i....ah yes,

now, my son is moving into his first apartment — one he worked steadily toward since leaving school, he is now 30, and is stoked to call his new space his own. Last time he visited, now, with his new acquisition, he wants to furnish the place so he roamed the house and asked for this and that to which i said yes and yes. He chose only a few things to take with him to his new space. Not the most valuable, but the most familiar. The things that reminded him of a childhood which he has reflected on occasion, passed too quickly.

He chose this painting.

Mind you he also walked around the house, room to room looking at what he would like to claim. Fortunately he does not make a habit of arriving with a shopping trolley to head to the fridge as i saw once in a British sitcom, i laughed my head off then but now I'm learning its a real thing.

anyway, on this occasion, for his new home and all his savings drained to pay his deposit and transfer fees, he strolled room to room specifically looking at art....examining what he thought could work well in his new home....lol.. He found one in the studio eventually after going through a pile of paintings, he was looking for one specifically i could tell, then he found it and i was surprised at the one he chose.

When he asked if he could take it, I felt something unexpected — not loss, but a kind of recognition. The painting had done its work. Not as an object of accomplishment, but as a presence that stayed put while he grew., waiting for this moment.

Before he takes it, I’ll retouch it lightly. Not to improve it or correct it, but to care for it. To stabilize what time has worn thus sending it forward intact and not rewritten.

There’s something quietly instructive in this moment. A painting I no longer stand behind as work has become a emotional artifact for Simon. It reminds me that art doesn’t always function as a statement. Sometimes it functions as a witness.

This week feels like that — a continuation rather than a revision. A familiar painting, moving on.

A once lived moment stepping forward.