After a career that kept him abroad for most of his working life for years at a time (in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Malaysia), retirement in Japan was a difficult season for my father to cope with, but the watercolour painting group in which he was an active member gave him a rich social circle as well as some form of routine and a sense of purpose. The weekly sessions got him out of the apartment regularly, while outdoor landscape painting excursions lifted his spirits. The semi(?)-annual group shows at a local gallery were occasions that he reported about to his children who lived far away on another continent; we were always delighted to hear him talk with such enthusiasm and receive e-mail updates of his latest masterpiece. At his funeral, a good proportion of attendees were from this circle of amateur painters. He was their peer, bound by a unique friendship that only a fellow painter who had week after week painted the same subjects together, struggled through the same technical and expressive challenges together, and shared some joyful ways of seeing together, could enjoy.
(to be continued.)
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