The Violinist

During the early 2000s, I began to write, produce, and direct theatrical productions and did this for 15 years with more than 30 productions under my belt. There was a young lady by the name of Brook who was part of several of these dramas. She had musical talent and could sing and play the keyboard. She told me one day that she was interested in learning how to play the violin. I had grown up playing the violin and the piano. My skills on the piano were much above those on the violin and I played the piano for 30 years so I had a musical background along with doing artwork. To me, paint and graphite were the blood that flowed through visual creative abilities. But music was the heartbeat of the human soul. I was interested in doing a piece of artwork that depicted the spirit of playing a musical instrument. I knew that in playing the violin the blonde horsehairs on the bow would break at times and a single hair or two would fly around while the bow was being moved back and forth along the strings. I decided to create a drawing of a violinist and I wanted to depict one of these broken horsehairs on the bow. I also wanted a model that had long blonde hair which mimicked the blonde horsehairs on the bow. Brook had long silky blonde hair and since she was a musician who was interested in playing the violin I felt she would be the perfect person to model for the drawing. I asked her to model and she agreed. When I had finished the drawing I entitled it "The Violinist" and put it into print. Not long after I had completed the drawing she began having pain in her abdomen. It was discovered that she had a cancerous tumor the size of a grapefruit in her stomach. After chemotherapy and radiation treatments, she lost her hair and lost so much weight that she became like a skeleton. She was a razor's edge to dying. But she courageously survived her battle to live along with many prayers and went on to live her life. As it sometimes happens in cancer treatment, a person's hair comes back a different color. Brook's hair came back dark and wavy. The drawing is a tribute to music and to the spirit of life. If one looks closely at the drawing, you can see that wild broken blonde horsehair on the bow.