making art for love

Making Art for Love

In New York I had lived certain of my imminent death. I felt death everywhere like an enormous invisible vacuum in the sky waiting to suck me up. The feeling never scared me so much as it motivated me. I was obsessed with drawing and painting. I lived as though it was the only thing I had to do before I died. After I was shot, and I moved to my home town of Minneapolis, this sensation disappeared. At first life seemed empty, boring and too sweet. But something surprising filled the void.

It was love. I fell in love with a Chilean dancer I'd met before leaving the city. We married after two years of commuting to see each other. We moved into a secluded house in the country around which I have built handsome gardens. A year after we married, my wife and I had a son. Suddenly, life looked awfully real. The violence and dark colors that had identified my paintings previously, completely disappeared during this period and were replaced by more colorful and playful imagery. The art scene in Minneapolis wasn't sufficiently strong to enable me to support a family. My New York contacts were not interested in dealing with an artist out of the city.

Photo: Tom Corcoran

I needed a job. I didn't want to confuse my art with making a living, so I entered the world of finance and discovered I had a knack for making spreadsheets and analyzing deals. Within two years I was vice president of corporate finance for a local investment banking firm where I performed mergers and acquisitions. I officed on the other side of a lake from my house. Although I had to conform, I was not totally conventional. Sometimes, in winter, I commuted by alternate methods such as skate sailing, as shown in this 1990 photo.