Homeless in Vancouver: Thanks for the great trashed memories

by Stanley Q. Woodvine on August 29th, 2014 at 11:08 AM

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Yesterday I fished the painterly equivalent of a snapshot out of a Fairview Dumpster. It recorded a moment shared by two people.

One of the people made the painting of the moment, and yesterday it would appear the other person took a moment to throw the painting away.

The painting depicted a sunset over water in shades of blue and neon pink. It wasn’t unusual for anything other than the fact that it was signed, dated, and bore a brief notation/dedication written on the back of the canvas.

The sun sets on another (and another) painting

It’s rare for Dumpster art to have so much provenance.

Stanley Q. Woodvine

The acrylic and oil on canvas painting was titled, not surprisingly, “West End Sunset” and dedicated: “For our times on the balcony. Great memories. Love D”. It was painted in May 2003.

I shouldn’t speculate on why the painting ended up in a Dumpster and I certainly shouldn’t judge its quality. I will say it was intense and I do think it would have been an act of love to hang it on a wall.

So much for not judging.

A photograph can seem like a neutral object of nature but a painting is a creation that always brings to mind its creator.

As for the moment depicted, the person may not need the painting to remember that. They were there after all.

Before “Kodak moments” replaced Rembrandts

This painting was in the same dumpster. Was it painted from the same balcony?

Stanley Q. Woodvine

Before life became a string of “Kodak moments”—back when picture albums were called “galleries”—I wonder if people were in the habit of snidely telling gawkers to “paint a picture, it’ll last longer”?

After all, if you really want to preserve a moment, paintings will certainly outlast photographs.

The oldest paintings in caves are over 40,000 years old. A little more recent are the 1000-or-so extant Fayum paintings—strikingly realistic portraits in an almost recognizably modernist style with colours that are as bright and fresh today as when they were painted, some 2,000 years ago.

The oldest known surviving photograph, on the other hand, is only 186 or 187 years old and doesn’t look a day over 300. Not only isn’t it in colour, it’s barely in black and white.