February 29, 2016

February 29

It is almost like sinking into velvet.  If I can stop aging, or hold back the years, so I can totally focus on the day.   There is something beautiful about waking up early in the morning, before dawn, and one starts to paint on canvas with a beautiful young girl in front of you.   As I take a seat, with a persian cat on my lap, I take a brush to express what is in front of me.   People have commented to me that the girls in my paintings are a total mystery, but in fact, they are a mystery to me as well.  Youth is beautiful.  Aging is beautiful.  But since I’m born on February 29, I age not every year, but every four years.

I was approached by a young beauty for my hand in marriage.  I turned her down, because I couldn’t imagine myself being a property of one person, and therefore I had to buy her 12 pairs of gloves for her to hide the fact she doesn’t have an engagement ring.   “Yes”and “No” tend to carry the same amount of responsibility.   She was a stripper with remarkable skill, and the one thing she didn’t do, was to remove her gloves.  I often regret that I made that decision not to marry, because it made me reflect on my slow-pace aging. 

I had the opportunity to make a recording in 1965 called “Put Me Amongst The Girls, ” which wasn’t a hit, probably due to the public’s indifference between the career of a painter and singer.   Again the ugly head of “Yes” and “No” stuck out of the gopher’s hole, allowing fate to make the final decision.   A flip of the coin has always made me nervous at the best of times - at the worst… Well, I follow my desire.

All I know a day without yours truly creating or making something is like death approaching me in a slow cat-like pace.  If I had a tail, I would slowly flick it back and forth, till I capture the moment.   To explain what I do, is like being forced to use a language one doesn’t know.  I paint, I sing, and therefore that is exactly what I am. A gallery sent me a message that they wanted a bio from me.  I wrote back stating “No biographical details.  I’m a painter of whom nothing is known. Now let us look at the pictures.  Regards, T.”