Yesterday evening I got to go to an exhibit of paintings by the American Portrait Artist Nick Hufford (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicodemus_David_Hufford_III) at my local Arts Center (
http://www.piedmontarts.org/)
The event had been organized by my friend Bill, who had been a friend of Hufford for many years. (Hufford was straight, BTW, but not narrow.) Bill had two paintings in his possession by Hufford, one of his mother and one of a woman that I swear he once told me was his sister, but I will get to that.
Hufford had lived in my area for many years and had painted the portraits of most every important person in town. It was quiet the status symbol to have your painting done by him. Bill contacted the families and in some cases the individuals and asked for them to loan them for the retrospective. I first learned about it recently when the curator called the office to ask to borrow our moving van to pick them all up. There was a reception for them the night before and last night was the opening.
So I step into the lobby and pick up on the vibe, the presence of old money, and retire my jacket and umbrella to the coat closet. Up the steps to the box mezzanine I am confronted with the large portrait of a well known local car dealer, golden in the fall sunlight of 1973. The clothers and the hair so perfect, another of a local business leader in the middle of a stream fishing and then there is Bill, my friend.
He is a small unassuming man, about 5ft. 5 in., 66 years old you would never know to look at him that his life had carried him to some of the most exciting situations of the late 20th century. There he stood in front of his late mothers portrait, beaming, flanked by a newspaper article about the the painting of the portrait in which Hufford appears with the unfinished work, and on the otherside, the pink dress Vickey wore, hanging, wrinkle free, from a form approximating a human. Greeting each person individually, smiling and shaking hands, he knew every single person no doubt.
Beyond him a few more steps to the main gallery, the walls covered with the faces of people I know or knew or met once. The portrait of the Trent woman that looks so much like Princess Diana I have always thought. Each of them labled as to who they are, who loaned it, which office it hangs in. All around until you get to the end where the lovely unknown woman that in my mind had been Bill's sister smiles like Audrey Hepburn on a summer evening. Her hair up, her neck ensconced with diamonds, her evening gown accentuated by her gloves. Unfinished in detail at the bottom. The card next to it read: Woman in New York, late 1960s. When Bill came by he was asked about it. "Everyone thinks its my sister" he told us "but I don't know who she is." Ah, the unknown woman, where is the pool table?
Bill said Hufford had given him the portrait years ago after the woman's physician husband had paid him $10,000 for it and then never came to pick it up because....by the time it was "finished" so was the marriage. The good doctor had left his wife in favor of his mistress.
So perhaps somewhere in the world there is an aging socialite recalling sitting for a portrait that she never saw, does not know what became of, has no idea she looks out, serenely and confidently and forever young over the white formal living room of my friend Bill, which used to be his parents carport. Next time I go by to consume a bottle of white whine with him we'll have to have a toast to her, and all the unknowns that populate our world and memory.
Topic: Shakesthegrounds Rumblings (Read 2618781 times)