Writing Snow

In the previous post I played a clip of the video of me writing the song Snow and describe the difficult emotions I felt viewing it after so many years. I was indeed a troubled young man and the effect is heightened by the poor quality and graininess of the video. This still that I pulled reminds me of the picture of Brando in Appocolyps Now. I was in a sort of a self imposed excille in the jungles of suburban Boulder desperately holding on to my old life and the rapidly dieing dream that was 20 Saturdays. 

The painting in the background was a borrowed Gino Hollander. Gino was an eccentric 1st Mountaineer Ranger WWII Vetran abstract portrait painter who lived in Aspen. We commission a portrait of Suzy by buying it at a silent auction at the Bartenders Ball in Snowmass for a couple of hundred bucks. He asked for 5 pictures and a chance to meet his muse. Suzy and I met Gino and his wife at their home on the Roaring Fork in Aspen and had a couple of glass of wine. He showed us his artwork around his house and we got to know each other a little bit. We learned he and his wife had had five kids after the war and he moved them all to Spain where he learned how to be an artist. His wife was an accomplished author and beautiful person. Each of his 5 kids were also artists all in different mediums. Later in Boulder we would see his daughters horse statues almost everywhere we looked. He took the pictures we'd brought and asked us to come back in a few weeks. When we came back he hadn't finished the portrait of Suzy, but we had more wine and visited again and he and his wife showed us more artwork and told more great stories and I realized these two were the coolest old people I had ever met. I told Gino we were moving to Boulder soon so he gave us a "loaner" painting to take with us and if we came back in a few months we could trade it in for Suzy's portrait. It was really cool and this still does not do it justice, but here it is pulled from a grainy 8mm video.

Gino said anyone who has lived here in Aspen always comes back. He was right and a few months later we came back for our first visit. When we met with Gino and his wife we were totally blown away! He explained that he doesn't just paint a woman's portrait he paints his impressions of the many stages of her life from young to old. Throughout his home he had displayed over 30 paintings of his impressions of Suzy. It was really quite amazing and somewhat overwhelming. He said to pick whichever one we wanted. There was one that had to be 10x10 feet of Suzy as a young girl that was so spectacular we didn't dare pick it. It was literally a masterpiece. I sensed his relief when we passed on that one. I do now hope somehow someway to see it once again. We did pick a a very special portrait that hangs on ourwall seventeen years later. It was one that reminded me of her on our wedding day. We call it our Gino Hollander. He said after he was dead it was probably going to be worth a lot of money. To me, from the moment I saw it I knew it was priceless.