where have all the flowers gone?

What happened to all my old paintings?  Where have they gone?

Well, the greatest loss occurred when I moved to the midwest from the east coast, and a bunch of stuff went into storage.  When it came out much of it was gone including what I thought were all of the old ones. And for the most part that was true.

But thank god I had given many away before that. And generously, some of my friends had bought some.  Most of those survived though I don't have pictures of most of them. Some of the ones I still have have never been photographed.

The other more shameful but much smaller loss was my own destruction.  I just got sick of hauling large ones around (and hundreds maybe thousands of small ones) and destroyed them myself.  This is done by artists every day, though I disagree with it. Of course this is nothing new. After all Barnett Newman had destroyed all his old work, Hans Hoffman had a fire that destroyed his.

Pissarro lost most of his work in 1871 when the Germans cut them up and wrapped their feet and bodies in them to keep warm and dry on their march.  I've always thought that would be a great scene in a movie.  Take it if you can use it! Imagine them going into battle with their feet wrapped in the paintings of one of the greatest French painters, with cloaks of the same wrapped around them.

Mine was not romantic or pretty.  It was just ugly destruction.  And they are gone.  All the same there are some few left, and even some that exist only in old photographs.

The rest have disappeared.

Goodbye my old friends, my beautiful children.