"Art is an action against death. It is a denial of death."
Lithuanian Sculptor
1891 - 1973
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| Mother and Child (1930) |
My first encounter with death was when my grandfather (my father's father) died during my tenth grade school year. I served as one of pall bearers. A year later, a girl in my class died. She was a cheerleader and I never saw her again after the game. Sudden and quick death. When I was a freshman in college a sixteen year old girl I had known from my camp years died in an automobile accident. During the summer between my junior and senior year in college my girl friend's mother died of breast cancer. And the list could go on and on. Every year or two someone I know dies. And I am sure I am not unusual. Most people know someone who has died.
Death is an every day affair, and yet we know so little of it. We try to deny its existence. We seek ways to extend our lives. We avoid talking about it happening to us. Yet death stalks us and is always close by. We cannot avoid it. So our art becomes a form of salvation — a way to extend our lives beyond the grave, a way to keep us alive. Art gives us hope that maybe we too can live forever.
