“Imagine That”
Today’s art is in honor of an amazing painter and gentle man, Richard Fraenkel. He was my painting instructor in college. He told quiet stories. He understood means of expression, healing, and color, among other things. He also knew love. When I knew him, he told many tales gently and deeply when he’d call us around him during class.
During WWII, he stormed the beach in Normandy, in the second wave. He served honorably in the European Theatre.
I recall another day he told a story of a merchant ship losing its cargo at sea — crates of beautiful oranges. He told how he floated among them. “Can you imagine?” he asked.
I could. Oranges in a blue sea. Half way above, half way below the waterline.
Cold, bright, orange, blue. Bobbing.
Years later, I wondered if the oranges were symbolic. No one could find the painting, or remembered the story. Did it happen just like that? Did he float among oranges in bright blue waters? Or were the oranges the men who died that day, the first wave he surely saw as they left the boats for the beach? Strong bodies, delicate bodies. Falling. Perishing.
My mind does that sometimes. Remembers things beautiful and strange, and conflates them with other things. Sometimes things not so beautiful. He painted beautiful reality, and maybe never conflated anything. He did not give us horrors, though he could have. I’m glad to have learned from him.
Richard Fraenkel lived in France for a time. He lived in the US. He made so many beautiful things after the war, including a family.
On Rivers and Bridges
I admire how Richard Fraenkel carried on after that – after the war. I heard later, he had suffered PTSD, and it’s a wonder there were so many bright and luscious colors in his work: sun and flowers, grasses and bridges, windows and lawns. White chairs. If I had seen the war like that, perhaps I’d only know gunboat gray, army green and red. I don’t know.
I knew a kind white-haired man living in an old library with the woman he loved, sharing stories and teaching us how to paint by seeing what we had painted, and noting it with specificity and appreciation. All our differing styles. All our oranges. All our layers.
We joined him one sunny afternoon to paint the railroad bridge behind his house. He painted it often.
The other day, I opened his work, a rolled up painting that his family let me have after he passed. It had been in the corner of his kitchen for over 40 years. I felt like it had held up the space between his living area and his studio upstairs. I opened it by my river. It is scroll of stories, oranges, blues, magentas, and memories.
Richard Fraenkel’s paintings are under care of his estate and more may be seen here.
