Saying Farewell

Today we celebrated the life of Phil Davison with a gathering of friends and family, surrounded by his paintings, sketches, drawings and publications about his work. While looking at photographs of him, I could hear him laugh, I could see the sparkle in his eyes when he was truly having fun, and the tight grin when he endured attention that made him uncomfortable.

Some of his paintings were so intensely lifelike, I had to remind myself they were not photographs. He seemed to see deeply into the subjects he painted, extracting something so personal, it seemed their thoughts could almost be known. The still life demonstrated his intense patience in capturing every single detail, not stopping until it was all there, complete and exact. So, I thought again about how much this gift could have distanced him from the world around him. Yet everyone I talked to knew him comfortably, not as an untouchable artist, but as someone they laughed with, sang with, performed in live theater with. He engaged, he lived simply among the members of this small community as a peer, as equal.

Phil was the kind of guy who would have laughed and thoroughly enjoyed Paul's satellite dish garden. This garden, a few years ago, was full of bulbs and delightfully filled the dish with color. Then the backyard cats moved in and started digging in it. The grass grew up and the cats laid in it until the grass laid down and died, making this lovely frosty cat bed this morning. But the flowers did come back, tulips, daffodils, crocus. A little red neck, but so very fun. Phil would have loved it, I'm certain.