Today is Dad's birthday. He would be 120 years old today! He died in 1984 and I still cry sometimes missing him. He was my best friend. I could discuss anything with him. He never judged. And he was a wonderful teacher. After a while, I wouldn't permit him to touch my work, no matter how much he was itching to. I didn't think it was right to say I had done it when he had been the one to actually do the critical parts, especially for commission work. He was very patient and explained to me what was needed. Sometimes I was too tender and too scared to listen. He was always careful to say what was good about the work, and then proceed to explain and demonstrate on the side, what I needed to do. It was a teaching model I for the most part, always used myself. Unless a student really wished for me to work on their painting, I would never touch their work without permission. And I always found good things to say about their efforts first. It's the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Dad died when I was just 36. It was way too soon for me. He was just a couple of weeks shy of 84. His birthday was November 15, 1900. He was born in Horten, Norway, which is a small village near Oslo. He left home when he was about 15 and became a cook on a square rigger and rose to be first mate by the time he left ship in 1922 to study art in New York. He studied with Miller there and then on to the Corcoran where he met my mother in art school. He paid for his tuition doing professional wrestling on 14th street and described rehearsing to make it more exciting. He was also a gymnast with a specialty in the rings and was in a Norwegian team in NY. He beat the national champion in wrestling in a private match for charity. He built two large sailboats, one 32' that became famous..the Atom and the second of his own design, the Mary Lois, at 53" with bowsprit and slept 8. Both my parents were award winning art students. He established his portrait painting career in Washington DC painting the well heeled and important. My parents had five children, all artists with grandchildren also in the arts.
After I built my house on the farm in Valley Lee in 1975, Dad was a regular for coffee most mornings. We would have long serious discussions. It was either before or after he went to pick up the mail at the post office. We discussed philosophy, politics and art by the hour. I was never bored with a discussion with him. For years as a kid, our "discussions" were actually a monologue by him, but as I became an adult, this changed. We had wonderful times together. How I miss those times still and with lots of alone time with Covid, those memories are even more precious. Sometimes when I'm in the studio working, especially if working on a marine, I feel his presence vividly. Then I am overcome with emotion, and so grateful to feel him with me. He sometimes visits me in dreams which are also very real and like gifts that leave me feeling warmth for days.
So yes, it has been decades since he's gone. It was such a blow to lose him. But I am grateful for the years I did have and that I got as much of him as I did. Lots of children could not say the same. He was always devotedly present for his family. He would rise early in Southern Md on Glebe Farm, drive four hours to Wilmington Delaware to paint DuPonts, in a suit and dress shirt, with a car load of easel and art supplies and return that evening. The next day he would do the same. Countless trips to DC and other surrounding areas were the same. He always came back home at night. No man is perfect and he had his faults, and I sometimes wonder how my mother put up with as much as she sometimes did, but as a father, I will always be grateful for having Bjorn Egeli as my dad.