death by Canadiana

Have been painting so many canoes, lakes, usually kind of grim, gothic. More my Swiss angst than the last piddling puddle of West Coast funk I like to think I am still a tiny part of. Hmm. And always struggling stupidly with the figure in the canoe, if there is one. Finally, it dawned on me a few days ago. It's got to be related to the drowning of Howard, my friend who drowned this spring, in front of his beautiful ancestral home in St. Agathe. He was an artist. Not remotely successful or known. But he was an incredible outdoorsman. Hiked around and slept outside in a million below weather. And he went canoing just a bit too early one Spring morn and the ice got him.