For the love of Batman: Preserving memories in painting

“Expulsion from Eden,” 1989. 72 x 168 inches, oil, wax on canvas, side panels destroyed, center panel only 72 x 84 inches.
Klement Studio

I first met Vera Klement (with a “K,” as she liked to say) in 2014, when she needed a “technician” to help her with her memoirs. I didn’t know much about her, except that she was a retired professor and artist, and someone who was suspicious of everyone who crossed her path.

My first visit to her loft is one that has stayed with me. My eyes were immediately drawn to the huge 3,000 square foot space filled with her larger-than-life paintings. As someone with an appreciation for art and a degree in art, I felt like I was back in the studio of my favorite oil painting professor. The beauty of her work drew me in, but before I got lost in it, she quickly led me to her desk by the window next to her piano and called out, “This is where we’re going to work.”

Over the next few months, Vera and I spent countless hours poring over her 400+ page manuscript. We “played around” with the text, disagreed about the scaling of the images, which she thought was a clever move to avoid turning the memoir into an art book. One day, Vera asked, “How did you learn to work with computers? I was always fascinated by it and resigned myself to calling it HAL. He’s always playing tricks.” This allusion led us to realize that, in addition to our mutual interest in art, music, and design, we also shared an admiration for science fiction, but it wasn’t until we learned about our mutual love of Batman that she decided I was someone worthy of her trust, and I stopped being just her “technician.”

The author with Vera

Our work meetings evolved into dinners where we would spend hours reflecting on the past, listening to her friend Peter’s many childhood stories, or visiting her favorite niece Stephanie. One evening, after taking a bite of her favorite dessert, tiramisu, and exclaiming “sublime!” as usual, Vera reminisced about a particular work of art, “Expulsion from Eden,” and its sadly destroyed panels. As she explained her decision, she reminded me of one of the many reasons I became an artist. Art allowed her to create a space where there were rules and laws that she could set herself and that no one could take away.

Motivated by this conversation, we spent the next few months bringing the destroyed panels back to life. Just as it all began, she instructed and gave me suggestions, and I built and painted them as an extension of her will. As I began the underpainting, I accidentally spilled bright red beyond the artist’s tape. Vera looked at it and said, “What are you waiting for? Go ahead,” encouraging me to accept it as part of the work. As we mixed the final shades, particularly a rich black-violet with wax, a new technique for me, she murmured, “Mmm, this color is delicious, isn’t it?”

A year later, Vera died. Every morning I walk past the painting, pause for a moment and search for fragments of memories of her.