Dear Picasso

I went to the Seattle Art Museum the other day. This was written on a piece called "On the Wall" by Sean Landers.

Dear Picasso,

In the time since my last New York exhibit my father unexpectedly died, my beautiful little daughter was born and the century and the millennium has changed. But one thing remains the same as all-ways and forever shall. That is the fact that I'm an artist. I am an artist with every bit of the strengthe you had. There is a deepness in me that no amount of art can fill. I have infinity, I have resolve and I have genius.

You passed away one day after finishing the painting depicted on the wall above. When I die I want it to be the day after I make a funny sad little painting in which the humour and tragedy of our existance is at once embodied. We're all laughing through tears which is what makes us what we are.

As you were the man of your century I am determined to be the man of mine. I ask that you be with me as I endeavor upon it. Give me the strengthe to lead. Give me courage to trust myself. Let every art work I ever make embody the abject tragedy of my father's death, the joy of my daughter's life and the beauty of my wife. Never let me take for granted my good fortune and help me with every day I live and every canvas I stretch to better myself and my art. I so want to be what I know I can be that I will in fact, die trying.

Yours truly,
Sean Landers

It's an amazing testament to the will to create. I don't think his desire to be the "man of his century" comes out of a need for fame but, rather, to express something as pure as Picasso did. Or maybe he does want world-wide fame...I don't know. It just moved me when I sat and looked at it for 10 minutes. I wish I could find the painting Landers was talking about. It really was a "funny sad little painting."