RIP, Lucian Freud

About an hour ago, I heard the news that Lucian Freud had died, at age 88. One photograph of him that I saw in the newspaper showed him last year, holding a small fox-like dog; the New York Times slideshow includes an early painting of a woman with a kitten, fascinating and not typical of the work he did later in his career.

I've admired Freud's work for many many years. He's a consummate realistic painter, perhaps the greatest of contemporary realists, and whether one likes his subjects and approach or not, I am intoxicated with the sensuousness and possibilities of paint when I look at his work.

So, a bit pensive, I took up my pen and drew on the paper that was nearest to hand. Which I should have done a great deal more in my life, but perhaps there'll be some time to make up for that.

Being in my father's house for the past few days, I was surrounded by a little retrospective of my own artwork, and I spent some time going around and looking closely at the paintings and drawings I'd given my parents over the years. On Friday night we met some of Dad and B.'s friends, mostly octogenarians themselves, who had been invited over for drinks before going out to eat as a group. As we were leaving, one of them took me aside and said quietly, I've admired your paintings here several times. Are you doing more now? I said I hadn't painted much at all for the past fifteen years but hoped to do more. You should, and I sincerely hope you will, he said.

It isn't about painting or drawing like Lucian Freud, or anyone else, though I am enormously grateful for their examples and inspiration. It's about doing my best, and going wherever each drawing or painting (or piece of writing) takes me. About surrendering, and listening, and then moving on freely, joyfully, to the next.

The BBC obituary said that Freud "lived to paint." I don't; most of us don't, and can't, live solely to do our art, whatever it is. But he reminds me to get on with it; now is as good a time as there will ever be.