=Why did Kikuo Saito Have to Die?=

I was going through some old paintings I did at the Art Students League about ten years ago and wondered what was up with Kikuo Saito. Actually, I couldn't quite recall his first name. So I googled him and learned that he'd died just a little over a year ago, February 15, 2016. He was 76 but even ten years ago, when I took two classes with him, I would have thought he was ten years younger than he would have been at the time. If someone told me he was ten years younger than that, I would have readily believed it. 

He was such a sweet, mild-mannered, self-effacing, soft-spoken guy. You would hardly even knew he was in the class nevertheless that he was an art-historically important artist.  I used to show up after work with  earbuds planted deep in my ears listening to my MP3 player set to repeat the same song over and over and over…two hours straight of Gimme Shelter or Pretty Vacant or Werewolves of London, something loud and thought-numbing like that, pushing paint around on my canvas like some kind of autistic epileptic mental patient.  I was not a happy person then, but that wasn't the only reason I was separating myself from the world—it was a way of putting myself into a trance, a way of blocking out everyone and everything else. A way of accessing a kind of self-induced, solipsistic, sacred ecstasy. 

Anyway, Kikuo Saito didn't have much to say to me or the class. He barely spoke English as far as I could tell and I didn't speak period. Once in a while, he'd walk around the room and step behind you at the easel and make soft, non-directive comments. Once he told me I had a nice sense of color. That surprised me because for so long I'd been married to someone who, among my many other deficiencies, insisted that I was color blind. "Fuck you," I imagined telling my ex. "A guy who has paintings hanging at MoMa just said I have a nice sense of color. What the fuck do you know, anyway?" 

Another time he asked me why I always painted figures into my paintings. Since it was an abstract painting class and he was an abstract painter it was a fair enough question. As often happens when someone asks me a question, I had no answer. 

It's funny how the death of someone you hardly know—and who surely doesn't even remember you as Kikuo Saito would not remember me—can strike you, while the death of someone you supposedly do know can leave you relatively untouched. Kikuo Saito was important to me on a level that I can't logically—or even entirely consciously—access or explain, as I'm proving here.

I was stunned to learn he died—even at 76. If anyone looked like he would live on, painting well  into his late 80s, early 90s, he did. I'm really sorry he died. I always liked his work a lot and the funny thing is that although I didn't/couldn't incorporate what he did into my own way of painting at the time, I did eventually see his unmistakeable influence years later, long after I stopped going to the Art Students League. At the time, though, it must have seemed as if I were ignoring him entirely.  He probably wondered what the hell I was doing in his class during the five seconds or less he was thinking about me at all. But how do I know for sure? Maybe he could sense that I wanted to talk to him, that I wanted to show that I was in the process of learning from him but somehow couldn't. That there was a bridge between us yet to be built. That it wouldn't be built for a long time yet. Not until we lost sight of each other altogether. Sometimes you feel that way about a person. You don't connect with them until after they are gone. I hesitate to say "until it's too late," because it's not too late. A real connection can only happen in it's own time.

Kikuo Saito