Nigel Fox Artworks

A few years ago I had a friend that killed himself.  In this life, we have choices.  We can chose one career or another, we can chose to travel or stay at home, we can chose to love or we can chose not to love.  Love is a choice, suicide is a choice–both are a commitment, both are an act, both are the same and yet polar opposites.

When I got the phone call that my friend killed himself, I had the brush to canvas on the above painting.  This was many years ago.  I put aside the painting and finished it a few days later.

Many questions remained unanswered.  Why did he do this?  Was it something that I did or didn’t do?

And of course there was the emotional side to it.  Remembering all the times that we had together, the funny things that he would say and do, and how loving he seemed to be.  Why did he do this?

Of course, people had all sorts of answers about this and would try to help by saying all sorts of things like, “he had a mental illness” or “he was into drugs”; both of which were true, but this was my friend and I loved him.  Why did he do this?

Fast forward 2 years.  A friend comes by my house and comments on this painting.  I keep a database of all my paintings and wrote a note about this at the time: “Painting this when I heard about N–my friend that took his own life in Jan of 2007.  My friend G says that this painting is both calm and angry at the same time.  I did finished the angry part about a month after starting the painting in jan”

Fast forward about 3 years from then.  I am married and just finished a year of art school, studying northwest coast art.  Amy and I are back in Topley and it’s a drizzly spring morning.  There’s a train on the tracks near our house, stalled out.  Nothing unusual because they usually do that on the bypass there–near the signal light in the above painting.

This, however, was not to be a normal spring morning.  The first responder’s call out alarm goes off (I volunteer as a first responder)…

At the time we were just told where the incident was with no details.  When we got there, the engineer told us that someone stepped in front of his train.  Sharp pang in your gut.  You make a decision.  Do you want to see this?  Do you go on?

My partner and I go and find the body.

There wasn’t much blood.  Aside from a compound fracture in the right leg, there was not much gore.  Elderly patient, no identification other than a ring and a jacket.  From how he was built, it looked like he was a worker for most of his life, probably at one of the mills or mines.  From what we could tell and what we were told, this was a suicide.

It didn’t effect me as much as my friend.  I didn’t recognize this man on the tracks in the exact location depicted in the scene above.

Even after I found out that this man was the husband of the woman who commented on my painting above, I don’t think that I shed a single tear.  I was too worn out from shedding all those tears over my friend and I knew it wasn’t going to bring anyone back.

I knew then that I needed to talk to someone.

Five years after losing my friend, and many many hours and days wondering why, I finally asked a friend, who was a closer friend to N, what they did and how they coped.  They told me that they saw many counselors and even had a nervous breakdown before they saw a psychologist.

This was what I had to do.

So, I finally talked with someone about how I felt and they finally gave me an answer that I could accept, after all these years of “why?”  They said that he did what he did not because of me or anyone, and not even because they didn’t have the will to live; but because they had the will to die.

It was not because I offended him and he was getting back at me, it was because he simply had the will to die.

Love and suicide are very similar in many ways, but mainly so because both are an act of will that has far reaching consequences beyond the direct participants.  It is written in the Bible:

And unto God, the Lord, belong the issues from death… God is love… “Chose you this day who you will serve…” I would consider the above painting one of my most prophetic to date and yet at first glance it does not seem to testify of Jesus and yet it so does…

My favorite English teacher in college always said “write about the things that you know.”  I believe that artists should also work from what they know; and not just writers.  It follows that creative people should reflect upon their lives, what they know and the people they have met along the way.

The tough part about creating from what you know is that the cuts that make the most impression are usually the deepest.  Reflecting upon past memories is a lot like touching a carving or sculpture with your hands.  You can feel every cut, every contour, every nook and all the “scars”.  The deepest cuts make the most impression.

A carving can’t feel back, and so too reflection can be a very one-sided thing and quite unhealthy if you’re not careful.  I learned this lesson with much pain and difficulty.  It was another lesson learned in college.  It was about a girl.  And like feeling a carving, any feelings were not mutual.  It’s painfully funny how something can, for all intents and purposes, look alive and yet have no life.  What I thought was attraction, turned out to only be attention-seeking.  I fell for the wooden doll that never came to life–that could never love me back.  I was in love with the likeness of someone and not the person.

I fell for Pinocchio’s sister.

Skip ahead a few years, after much wandering in confusion, God sent a messenger who breathed life into me.  And though I was very attracted to her, she had something that I needed so much more desperately, the Holy Spirit.

She gave all the credit for the success in her life to Jesus.  The dark reflections in my soul (aka shadows) shuddered and even scrambled to explain it away; the light was rejuvinated!!!  The cut was made!

I remember the day when we sat in her Uncle’s car, watching the distant killer whales blow pillars of mist into the golden remnants of evening light that made haloes around her most beautiful eyes and face.    She told me that I have the Holy Spirit in me.

Like the air that the killer whales need to breathe, she breathed life into me.

I will carry what I saw on those shores for the rest of my life.  I would thank her, but she would just give the credit to Jesus anyways, and so I thank God!

Now, you might be thinking that we were destined for love and great things.  And we were…but not together.  I was in love with what shone through her.  I was in love with Jesus.

We tried to “make” it work over the years, but the relationship was built on sand before it was ever built on stone.  Hearts were wounded, tears shed, paths carved seperately.

I wish to this day that I could say that I am sorry for how things worked out, but that’s probably just me over-reflecting.  After all, things haven’t been all that bad.  She’s now happy working as a pediatric nurse at BC Children’s hospital and I’m happily married as an artist.

And now, like most of my stories, I leave you with a paragraph pertaining to a perpetual platitude applied to personal perceptions.  Good art is like a reflection of who we are.  Great art is a reflection of who God is.  It’s healthy to reflect upon who people are, but it’s healthier still to reflect upon who God is.

Or, as the very centre of the Bible states:

  “Far better to take refuge in God
than trust in people;
Far better to take refuge in God
than trust in celebrities.”

 Psalm 118:8-9
The Message