I just wanted to say thank you.
It's all I could think to say if I had the pleasure of meeting you. I wish I could have had the chance. Just a simple "thank you" that would never do justice to how much you've given me.
Thank you for the endless hours I've spent throughout my life pouring over your work, trying not to imitate, but to understand your style. Thank you for providing such an amazing mystery, so much inspiration. How did you do it? How did you keep my attention? You must have know that your work was special. It must have been a challenge to stay humble.
Thank you for not telling the whole story in your paintings. Thank you for just giving a glimpse and allowing me to fill in the blanks. In this way I'm sure your work has a different meaning for each of us. As I move through life, your work is flexible enough to change with me, having new meaning every time I look at it. In this way your work is timeless.
Thank you for not hiding behind perfection. Your brush strokes were never exact. Your blends were never smooth. You never tried that hard. The emotion couldn't be more apparent. Was it all intentional? Through each painting I can see you sitting in your dark studio, under a lamp with the smell of oils and turpentine in the air, focusing intently on the canvas. Thank you for sharing that with me. Thank you for not being a technician.
Thank you for doing it your way. You see, I'm an artist myself. I've often dreamt that one day I could create just one work of art that would impact someone else as much as any of your paintings have impacted me. I ended up going a different route in life, but I still draw from time to time and I can barely put the pencil to paper, or brush to canvas without a quick thought as to what it was like for you to do the same. Thank you for making me feel like we had something in common.
One day I'll visit your museum and spend some quiet time looking over your paintings. I've never seen one of them in person. I'll fly the family out there and show my girls something that meant so much to me when I was their age. Something so powerful that its impact on me never dulls. I can only hope that they'll understand how important it was for me to have an icon like you.
Frank Frazetta, February 9, 1928 - May 10, 2010.
