You and I Are Too Old Not to Share the Wealth of Our Gifts- and Those of Others
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
This is a story about art, legacy and gifts that I want to share
Bill and I finally met last Saturday.
Selden is a well-known, hugely-talented artist who has spent his life photographing exquisite moments and then painting them in breathtaking style. I was captured by that skill the first time I saw one of his works in the Tsunami Gallery, in the tiny coastal town of Gardiner, Oregon.
Like many before me during the ten years that the gallery had this painting, I stared at it in awe. Most of us walked out, wanting it, but not buying it.
Over time I put my pennies together and took the piece home. Here it is, currently waiting for me to put it up on my newly-painted walls:
Since I spend my Wednesdays on the coast, every so often I’d head back down to the Tsunami to stare at more of his work. Eventually I bought another painting, which was done back when Selden lived in the lovely coastal town of Yachats.
He had perfectly captured the feel of a breezy summer day with the tide coming in.
Here’s that piece, also awaiting its prime time on my new walls:
That painting was my sanity point, leaning on an easel in my office last year while I recovered from yet another foot surgery. I couldn’t drive for weeks, so the ocean was just a memory. Selden’s evocative work allowed me to smell and hear the ocean even as I was locked in my home.
Yet there was more.
Last March I explored the Oregon Coast in Lincoln City. One morning I misread my watch and got up at 2:30 am. By the time I realized my mistake, I had too much caffeine in my system.
The motel room I’d rented had a panoramic view of the coast from south to north. It was a clear night, colors I’ve never seen anywhere. A perfect full moon was making its slow arc towards the Pacific Ocean’s horizon. Clouds were beginning to gather in the west, soon to be kissed pink.
I had a four-hour light show as the moon cut a path through that unearthly blue vision. Suddenly I realized that I really needed to take a photo; it was too beautiful to lose. Would I see this again? Well, I wasn’t going to take that chance.
Here’s what I saw through my window:
The photo was wonderful. What I really wanted was for Selden to paint it. At the time I had no idea if he’d even consider such a thing.
While it took a little doing, as Selden doesn’t use a computer, I did reach him, and he agreed. There followed attempts to get the photo just right for him to start work, then I waited.
A few months later, he told me it was ready. Then it was up to me to find the right day.
Finally, one weekend I made the two-hour plus trip to Coos Bay, where Selden has lived for some years. He had my painting, his last commissioned piece (and I am honored), on display in his office.
He wanted to know if those were really the colors. Yes, they were- which is precisely why I wanted the paining done.
Here is his painting:
You can see how he does such a gorgeous job of interpreting the photo. It’s a perfect reproduction of that moment.
This article and selection of his pieces ( I own two of those listed on this brochure) give you an idea of his background. I found out from Bill that like him, I was doing portraits at Disney, but at different times and across the country from one another.
He was, of course, vastly better than I was.
His work was in Disneyland. My puny little pencil-scratch profiles were done on Main Street in Walt Disney World back in 1971 when they opened. In fact, his watercolor methods for portraits, which he pioneered, are still in use today in Disneyland.
Selden continued with his formal art degree. I redirected to become a writer. I rarely picked up a brush or a pastel again, but my early art training gives me a deep appreciation for good work. I am particularly impressed with work so exquisitely rendered it almost feels photographic.
Selden first captures his subjects in photographs of landscapes and portraits, then he puts his spin on them. Some of those artworks have made their way to restaurants and galleries up and down the coast and in the Southwest.
I drove south along this storied coast to collect my painting.
These days Selden, at 77, continues to work on a variety of projects. He paints in oils, and no longer does portraits. He has an incredible eye for the way the crest of a wave is thrown back by the wind, the same way a horse’s mane is tossed during the gallop.
The way the sun will highlight the greens from inside a wave when the light hits it just right is one of my favorites of his. He also has a skill for capturing how dappled sun dances on water on a forest stream.
Above all, it’s how he captures light.
In 1984 I was living in Melbourne, Australia, a great city of culture and the arts. The National Gallery of Victoria was downtown, not far from the square where all the street buskers played their music. I visited one day, then I couldn’t stop visiting.
The National Gallery of Victoria was showing a collection of works by what had come to be called The Heidelberg School, a group of artists from the late 1800s who expressed the extraordinarily complex and intense light unique to that great land.
As with much else with that faraway country, not much credit was given these exceptional artists. Many of them were equal to any other of their day who were painting in Europe, but not much is known of them the way we know of Manet or Monet.
My coffee table book of Australian artists allowed me to appreciate how those people revealed the unreal beauty of the continent. Above all, the importance of capturing light with paint the same way- or better- than the senses might en plein air, as did other famous artists did all over the world.
Australia’s Impressionists, because of how they painted the eerie, uncanny light of that country, taught me more about how to see light than any art teacher had. Here on the Oregon coast, there are untold opportunities to capture that magic.
Selden’s art caught me the same way. I wanted more of his paintings of the same places I’d found so lovely all along the coast in my house, for those days when I couldn’t get to the ocean. Or, simply, to allow me to daydream about them during a break from writing or workouts.
You and I are WAY Too Old to hang on to what we have which the world deserves to enjoy.
Bill has an inventory of his work at his house which I greedily inspected. Two of the three that I ended up purchasing that Saturday are leaning against the door to his inventory, below.
I’ve got at least two or three more I’ve earmarked- a good excuse for another gorgeous drive down the coast to spend money on worthwhile investments.
The investment is in the quality of my living space, where I get to see this work while eating breakfast. Where dinner guests will also get to enjoy Selden’s work.
That’s a gift to me as I age, and a gift to my guests when they visit.
As I worked carefully through his collection-I want all of it, mind you- Bill was putting protective cardboard over the canvases of my paintings to ensure a safe drive home. His inventory is available to you and me and anyone else willing to make this pretty drive and add evocative, museum-quality original art to our walls, or even to a gallery, if you have one.
On sharing legacies and gifts
This is where I come to the gifts. Bill’s work is shown now in just two galleries on the coast. As he is approaching eighty, Bill doesn’t have the energy to schlep his work to more galleries, and doesn’t have family to help manage the sale of his paintings once he is gone.
I would like to support having more of his work in people’s houses or their art galleries. Bill is allowing me to let Dear Reader know that his inventory is available, just as it was to me, at prices beginning at $400 for his smaller works.
Bill also gave me permission to publish his phone number. You’re invited to make an inquiry. You can leave him a message at 541-217-9019. If this works for you, organize a visit. With respect to Bill, this isn’t a garage sale, so please, serious inquiries only.
Happily, he won’t sell you the ones he’s earmarked for me. I’ll be back for those and likely a few more soon. But if this kind of work stirs your soul like it does mine, and you are within driving distance of lovely Coos Bay or are willing to make a pilgrimage, it will be worth it.
All artists pass into memory. It will be soon enough for those of us who, like Bill and I, are in our seventies. I’d like to see more of his work make it to places where it can be admired, just as it will at my house.
Those who inherit the artwork from me will give Bill’s work the love it deserves.
That’s the gift.
Let’s play.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me. I hope this gave you pleasure and I also hope, if you’re out this way, you do indeed reach out to this fine artist. That would give me great pleasure. If this was a fun read for you please consider
If you know a collector or artist, please also consider
Either way, thanks for reading my work.
I live in MN and am fortunate to travel annually to the Oregon coast (usually Lincoln City and Newport) with my friend who lives in suburban Portland. I can understand why you’ve invested in bringing the ocean into your home. What beautiful artwork! Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing these!