eddie

The entrance to Eddie’s studio is tucked away in a courtyard away from the street. Besides his name next to the door bell there is no sign of art anywhere. I ring even though the door to the building is propped open. A few moments later I hear a voice calling me to come upstairs. There’s punk rock music playing on the stereo and Eddie offers me a beer. I politely decline and we sit down to talk at a table set with paint brushes, figurines, notes, and a bowl of chips.

When Eddie turned fifty he had two thousand dollars to his name and he decided to spend it all on his birthday party. He hired a band and went all out. A few days later, for the first time in his life, Eddie experienced genuine financial success from his art when a show in Indonesia nearly sold out. This was in 2007 and he’s been doing well ever since. The road up to this point however, was not always easy.

Eddie knew he wanted to be an artist from an early age. His cousin worked on a tanker ship and from him he knew that he also wanted to see the world. Eddie’s dad, a career military man, was against Eddie pursuing the life of an artist and so Eddie set out to prove to his dad that being an artist could mean a respectable career, just like being a lawyer or a doctor. Eddie’s dad never did get to witness his success. A week before his passing, he let Eddie know that he was OK with the path he chose.

Professors at art school would tell Eddie that his work was too bold, too colorful, too this, and too that. When he was twenty-seven an established woman who was twenty years older than him took an interest in him and invited him to Switzerland. They could barely communicate with each other and after three months the relationship fell apart. Eddie proceeded to tell me his life story in terms of love – how one relationship led to a certain discovery which caused something to change in him which in turn would bring him somewhere else. After stints in the Netherlands, Los Angeles, and Indonesia, Eddie returned to Switzerland and stayed – also for love.

Eddie and his work exude childlike determination – a thirst to create and explore that has allowed him to stay playful and fresh well into his career and strike a fruitful balance between unrelenting ambition, contentedness, and love. Eddie intends to make art until the day that he dies.

[28] Wednesday, June 9, 2021