Prelude To Helga

There have been many times I did not feel like going to work; I almost always go anyway. I remember this morning well. It was excruciatingly cold. The night before I had attended Mr. Kuerner's 90th birthday party at Hanks Place and was happy to have met some local folks who knew him well. This morning I went to work specifically hoping on the outside chance of meeting Helga whom I had not yet met but had always wanted to. A voice from beside me surprised me. It was a neighbor I'd met the night before out for an early morning walk in the bitter cold. "I figured that was you," he said. "I knew it wasn't Andy." He told me how he often had run into Andy and Helga out working during those 15 secret years working together to create their famous and historic series. "I've never met her," I said. He realized I would like to and went about making it happen, which it did that afternoon. Helga and I spent that afternoon talking in her ice-covered cabin. I was delirious when she came to the door and invited me in. She looked over several of my paintings being very honest and often critical. I actual could hear a lot of Wyeth in her point of view and took what she had to say as coming straight from the source. This painting she actually liked and asked me to send her a print, which I did.

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