A Man’s Life

Deane created a story with text and pictures in the mid-80s. There are eleven paintings that tell snippets of the story. The family does not remember what he titled the story and only one daughter remembers seeing the book of which no copy or text has been located. The paintings got moved around after the fire. Sketches are included in this set until the rest of the paintings can be located. Deane was the model for the war image and the last three images. Below is a reimagined version of the text by middle daughter Jill. The first paragraph corresponding to each image explains what is happening in the story. The second paragraph are the words on the images.

A young man of modern age on the cusp of adulthood is visited by an apparition who warns him of trappings that would keep him from a successful life. He envisions a portal to a bedouin past.

Wind chimes, colored glass, prisms shooting shafts of light through its forested interior   An aviary for songbirds, organ-like chasms recreating the roar of a fast, green river  Cool pine scent wafting across its fern-choked banks – a universe in clay  But so light it hovers  above the arid courtyard

The apparition tells a story –

“What is my life’s path?” a youth asks an elder.

Life’s path, you say  life’s path  you shall follow the three-fold way  of all youths of no inheritance       War, drink, sex now go away,  I must-must contemplate

The elder drops his jug.  It shatters.

The rebels invite the youth to fight with them.

Dust, confusion, battle banners, bugles blaring – the exhilarating striving to master the exacting art  of maiming one another

The rebel leader notices the boy cowering.

The glories of war are not for you, boy  You’ve not the fine competitive spirit, the pure lust for gore  Even the horses scare you,  but come,  I’ll buy you a wine and send you on your way

The youth enjoys the wine and drinks until he hallucinates.

What do you see flickering in the forefront of your mind that others can’t see?  When the morning breeze blows away the alcoholic haze, will this phantom also disappear?

The youth becomes infatuated with a woman. 

Two shy young bodies clash and thrash in inexperience.  Two expectations carom giddily in a shower of phantom light.  Ah, well  Practice will make perfect.

The woman leaves. The young man has yet to give up the drink.

But, oh, the price.  As though all you dreamed of has disappeared in this one effort.  The last phantom light winks out.  You who have never mastered the relationships of living beings  are left bereft of any company

Much time has passed and he is now an aged man.  He wanders and stumbles upon a broken jug that reminds him of asking the elder a long time ago what is life’s path.

A hill, a grove   A broken jug, somehow familiar.  the unwise wiseman – yes.  Such a long life ago  And now you are as fragmented as his jug.

If you could patch the scattered shards of your self as you would the scraps of a broken jug

Memory gone blind – A head once filled with shape and color – empty of light

One night, an apparition appears.  She grants him one memory.

One memory – perhaps that will suffice

The man is repentant for not heeding her advice of long ago.  She replies,

“I’ll share your road as I hoped I’d share your life.  I’ll be the light-always in the forefront of your mind”

The young man who had this vision and listened to the apparition’s story came away much wiser.

Celebrations

Deane made a calendar sometime around 1978. Most of the pictures described how the month acquired its name or the god it was named after. The calendar was made as a Christmas gift for Deane’s parents and possibly for Louise’s parents. Deane pasted school pictures on the dates of each child’s birthday.

January – Janus, an ancient Roman god of doorways, of beginnings, and of the rising and setting of the sun, usually represented as having one head with two bearded faces back to back, looking in opposite directions – one looking to the future, the other to the past. The ship might represent the arrival of Saturn to the city Janus founded, Janiculum.

February – Februalia is an Roman ancient festival in which fire is used for purification. This month moves from winter to spring. The couple may be attributed to Juno, goddess of marriage and love.

March – Martius, a Roman god, is attributed to military campaigning. Deane is also combining western images…flying kites on a windy day.

April – Romulus is plowing the boundary of Rome. Rome is said to be founded April 21. The wolf image in the trees represent Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf.

May – Maia is the oldest of seven Pleiades. To the Romans, Maia was the incarnation of the earth mother and goddess of spring. An image of Mercury is on her forward. He is the son of Maia.

June – Juno is often shown as warlike with a goat-skin cloak, wearing a diadem, and carrying a spear. She is thought to be connected to love and marriage.

July – Julius Caesar was born in Quintilis, the 5th month. He was a Roman general and statesman. When he changed the calendar he adopted his own name as the seventh month.

August – Augustus was the first Roman emperor following the death of Julius Caesar who adopted him. He is holding a map of his empire. The sphinx figure, which is a symbol of secrecy, was the image on his signet ring.

September – The blonde woman is Ceres/Demeter. The myth is that we have the seasons because she grieves when her daughter is in the underworld. Her grief brings on fall/winter. The brunette is possibly Prosperine/Persephone. She is crying because she has to go back to to the underworld.

Gina recalls Kirk posed for the April calendar.

October and December is missing. November is above.

Rising Through the Ashes!

I will call this one 1976 because that is the year it was painted. I am comparing the cleaned up painting (right) to how the painting fared after the fire (left). We were lucky it got saved at all. Kudos to Framin’ Gallery of Edmond, Oklahoma to the fabulous restoration. The way 1976 originally looked is in the Seventies gallery in the Family section. Deane took a slide of the painting plus many others in 1979. Many of the paintings we lost live on because of those slides.

Starting at the top going clockwise: Kirk, at age 12; Jill, at age 11; Gina, at age 7; Anne, at age 14; Kay, at age 9. The dog’s name is Whitey.

Jill has a story about this painting. Deane had an art exhibition/sale that year. Gary Goree, her future husband’s uncle, also displayed paintings. Mary Anne Goree, her mother-in-law, always tells how she remembers seeing this painting at the sale. Jill didn’t meet Brian Goree until seven years later. The flyer below may have been from 1977 because March 6 fell on a Sunday that year.

Ridin’ High!

This is a beautiful print from a painting, but I have no idea where the painting is. The print was found in a plastic sleeve. Deane made slides of sketches of cowboys and horses in the mid-1970s. The print was not one of the slides, so it could be from the 80s. I included it with the Seventies Gallery because it fits in so well. Several of the cowboy sketches he made into full paintings. Alas, the original sketches were not found.

Update: Gina sent in photos of the blue vase. You can view them in Early Paintings, about 3/4 down.

Seventies Gallery is nearly complete. The last entry is the calendar Deane made about 1975.

What’s in a name?

The Ingraham signature through the decades…..

  1. Before 1968. Heavy ink, capital letters and spaced apart. During this period, Deane’s signature was often all over the place. Sometimes at the bottom as in this detail of Louise on the Couch with the Blue Lamp, or running along a microphone stand, or hiding in the background.
  2. 1968 – 1970 The ink is thinner and still all caps.
  3. A self-portrait, 1970. This is the only painting that has the ‘g’ as lowercase. It is the first self-portrait where he sports a mustache.

4. The painting reeks 1960s! But I don’t really know. It is mixed media with bits of brown paper and foil (see the mirror?) There is no other artwork that has this signature. Girl on Bike was shown at an art sale NFS.

5. Hawk, 1970 This signature will last. Sometimes the ‘I’ is longer than the other letters, but the ‘G’ is definitely bigger. Most paintings are signed lower right. It is not usual to have a signature in red-violet.

6. Wendy, 1974 This is the way most paintings are signed.

Henry’s Pride, 1962

This was painted in 1962! A very different style from most of Deane’s painting from the sixties. I think he spent more time on this one. He entered it in the Tulsa, OK Philbrook Art Center’s twenty-second annual exhibition April 3 through April 26, 1962. It was listed as “Oil $100”. It did not sell and I believe it is now lost.

Henry Holcomb Bennett remains best known as the author of the popular patriotic poem, “Hats Off – The Flag Goes By.” This poem was first published in “An American Anthology” in 1900, in “The Young and Field Reader, Book Five” in 1915, and in Woman’s World, July 1919. It was soon sung widely—especially on the 4th of July.

The Flag is Passing By

Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A dash of color beneath the sky:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!

Welcome to IngrahamTulsaArtist.com

This art blog is designed to showcase Deane’s art from post-college through 2000.

Louise with the Blue Lamp, 1960 This was done the same year as Lifeguard (see Portfolio). Gina writes,

I know the lamps were a wedding present from the antique store owner that Mama was working for when they got married. I brought them to LA after Mama died. One is cracked a bit and the other I had rewired- though it needs to be rewired again.

Louise at table, 1968. Notice how much his painting style has changed.