Humor and Loose Suits

I recently unearthed a disk that had several of my father's paintings. That's one of the advantages of downsizing and moving…you come across things you didn't remember you had. My father, who was naturalized as a US citizen in 1952, (after serving as a Merchant Seaman all throughout WWII for the US) took the name of Steve Ericsson. His real name was too hard for most American's to pronounce, Sture, so he just went with Steve. He'd always painted. I know this because the smell of turpentine has the same effect on me that the smell of apple pie has for most Americans. He moved to Ibiza, in the Baleares Islands in 1960, broke, heart-broken, probably drunk and totally lost. He met Steve Seley, an American Beat poet, and promptly joined him on a several day bender, which he thoroughly enjoyed. When he showed up on the wharf to ship out on his merchant ship, his duffle bag was lying on the dock, and had been for 2 days since his ship left. Everything he owned was in that bag, and he was flat broke. Thus started his love affair with Ibiza, where he lived until he died 21 years later. He painted for a living, sold little canvases to get more money more often, drank too much, and was Dad.

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