When I opened up The New Yorker Magazine a week ago I saw a photo of a painting. It was a painting I recognized immediately: not the particular image, but the artist's work.
When I was a little girl I had a friend who had a very, very fancy house. Her father was eccentric and collected art, large wolfish dogs and sports cars. One of his cars was a MG which was a tiny convertible with a roll bar in the back seat. I rode in the frame of that roll bar once. I got a ride. I was little and the bar slammed against my head when he sped over bumps and it didn't feel fun or safe. I couldn't wait to get out of that car. It looked so appealing and fun but was really the opposite: I think all my hair was knotted or had to be untangled from the roll bar to extract myself from the vehicle. I am exaggerating of course.
I am sure I cried and felt like a baby which is not an exaggeration at all.
When I sat on the brown velvet couch in their split-level house I breathed in the dog breath from their giant German Shepard. His mouth was so big and his tongue so pink and long that his breathing echoed everywhere. I was able to pet his long nose without getting bitten but his fur clung to everything. Even hidden in the white carpet with the brown border which mimicked the design of the tile dining room floor. All custom stuff.
In my perpetual state of panic and curiosity I looked at the artwork. On one particular day I was sitting in the toilet in the downstairs bathroom and a bolt of lighting struck a tree in their back yard which had a power line connected to it. Every one started to scream:
"fire! fire!"
The dog was going wild and everyone ran out of the house. Smoke was everywhere and I was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom adjacent to the living room which held my favorite work of art: yes, the painting in the magazine. The one by Alma Thomas. In fact, as I remember it, the wall which held the painting was on the other side of the same wall which held the toilet, so when the lightning struck I guess I could say the painting and I were energetically connected for a moment.
I panicked and ran outside with my underpants down which really wasn't all that different than how I felt in that house almost all the time (with the exception of sitting in the kitchen watching Bewitched and eating tuna salad and drinking Tab which was an entirely calming experience). I ran out and ladies were yelling, "Liz!Liz!Liz" or so I'd like to believe they remembered I was peeing and the firemen came and everything was back to normal.
Ha!
So there was Alma's painting on the wall. It was modern, colorful and reminded me of something a child could do, except she nailed the rainbow colors and even brushstrokes better than any kid I knew. It was 70's stuff like rainbows and Peter Max colors and big. I sat there after the fire and became one with the purple horizontal hyphen-stripes. I am standing on a purple line and playing hopscotch. Purple purple step step not on a crack and then blue blue blue. Red red red. Pink pink pink. Orange orange orange. Like a Candy Land board but so much better. That looks like a sunrise through the rainbow.
Alma was an African American woman who was born in the late 1800's. This painting was in my friend's fancy living room in New Jersey. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know who painted it. I didn't care except whoever did had something really great going on. Whoever that kid or person was. I was grateful that painting was there for me.
After the divorce my friend's mom got rid of her ex-husband's art collection and re-did the whole place. I never saw that painting again until last week at the Studio Museum in Harlem. I went to Alma's exhibit in 2016. I was mesmerized the minute I entered the room. Her paintings are so beautiful and alive. There were different styles and patterns and a variety of bold colors. I was singing in my heart and I felt like it somehow belonged to me.. The whole place.
Across the room was the painting from New Jersey. I wasn't sure at first but it was distinctly different from the others. I stood there and wished I could touch it.
The title is: "Apollo 12 Splash Down". It was painted in 1970.
It was lent to the museum by a gallery.
It seems like nobody owns it now.
Excellent story! Think you should go back and touch the painting. I won't tell.
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