January 4, 2021 by Tosh Berman

 

One day I jumped into a body of water and hit my head against a rock. It took a while to recover, and I had plenty of time to think of what went wrong with my life. I was middle-aged, no wife, and not very successful with my writing or drawings.  I debated within myself if I should give up one medium for the other. The odd thing is when I did attempt not to draw again, the writing urge left me as well. So, I decided to keep pushing both 'arts' at the same time and just hope for the best. Of course, 'the best' takes its sweet-time and left me with great feelings of doubt and depression.  

My father was a solicitor, and my mother came from a long line of master plumbers. I was raised to be practical and taught skills and science as someone who would join my family's customary world. As a teenager, I enjoyed filling my school books with drawings of nude women wanting themselves with another male. Therefore they were my first self-portraits among the ladies of my imagination. Once my vision and desires opened up, there is no way I'm going back to the landscape of my parents. 

I married an artist, Ida Nettleship, a woman of great talent and beauty. We shared a sense of adventure and lived in the town of Martigues in Provence, between Aries and Marseilles.  The home was on the tip of the canal; we could wake-up in the morning and fish from our bedroom. Since we had very little to no currency, the fishing came to be life-saving for the children and us. At this time, I became obsessed with the fish we caught, and I started to do drawings of the species. In one of my opportune moments in my DNA, I wanted to study pisciculture, the controlled breeding, and the rearing of fish. My wife and the older child stamped their feet loudly on the ground. They told me in impolite terminology that they didn't want to be surrounded by 'smelly' fish. Giving up dreams or ambitions is almost allergic to my body, but still, I understood their argument.

I got bored at Martiques and felt locked-in with the family unit. I didn't want to leave them, but I thought we needed a new life. Therefore I became accustomed with the Romanni people in the area of France and Italy. I learned to speak various versions of their language and learned their manners and culture. At this time, I met Dorothy, who I hired to be my model. We fell in love, and with some difficultly, we arranged that she be part of the family unit. I had two sons and two daughters with Dorothy, so in a sense, I felt like I was the leader of the gang, with my wife, mistress, and the children. We became a Gypsy caravan and traveled throughout Europe. In our stay in London, Dorothy was attracted to an artist friend of mine, Henry Lamb, and I encouraged her to have an affair with him. 

I became a noted portrait painter of the rich and famous, which suited my taste perfectly. My best job at the time is my portrait of the actress Tallulah Bankhead. If I could afford another clan member, I would gladly have her part of my world. There are those who judge our actions, but in actuality, they have no understanding of how life flows through the currents that are so close to the call of nature. 

-Tosh Berman.