I was fortunate to be a friend of
Jon Imber (1950-2014) both in Boston, where Jon and I moved in the same art
world circles, and in Maine, where our family has lived every summer, first in
Deer Isle and now across the Reach in Harborside.
Jon met the wonderful artist Jill Hoy in 1989 at the
Stonington summer home of legendary painter/printmaker Karl Schrag. It was love
at first sight and what Shakespeare (in Stonington) would call “a marriage of
true minds.”
I often saw Jon and Jill painting
together on Deer Isle with their twin easels set up in a field, by a pond, or
near the sea. Jon had been a studio painter before he met Jill, but she
encouraged him to go outside and paint what he saw. Even when he moved back
into the studio, a few steps away from their house in Stonington, he set up his
easel with a view of Jill’s garden, a fabulous multi-colored paradise of
lilies, lupine, foxgloves, snapdragons, and wild roses.
Jon and Jill’s paintings changed
the way I look at this beautiful landscape, too. Jon immortalized Stonington
Harbor; Fifield Point; the Lily Pond; the Pink Lily Pond; the Causeway; the
Deer Isle Bridge. Walking or driving around Deer Isle or Harborside, I would
often say: “That’s a Jon”, or -- especially when the light was glimmering on
the water -- “That’s a Jill.” Even after Jon moved indoors and started painting
abstractly again, his work was filled with the spirit of the landscape, the
sound of the sea.
In the Fall of 2012, Jon was
diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive
neurodegenerative disease, and began very rapidly to decline. His last summer
in Maine, the whole community came together to help. Friends donated physical
therapy, built ramps, drove and carried him, helped him figure out ways to keep
on painting. Deer Isle artist Holley Mead organized a meal train to bring
dinners for Jon and his family. I made soup.
I made soup from the vegetables
in my own garden, with help from Four Season Farm, Tinderhearth, David’s Folly,
Yellow Birch Farm, Little Island Oyster, and other local farms. Whenever I
stopped by to buy supplies, my farmer friends would say, “Take a little extra
for Jon.” The whole Peninsula was pulling for him.
Sometime that summer, as Jon was
more and more confined to the house, he began painting portraits of family and
friends and people who came by to help. And so many people came by to help! It
was a great outpouring of love and art.
That summer, although he was more
and more immobilized, and using only his left hand, Jon painted a hundred
portraits. They were exhibited at Haystack in November, in a beautiful and
moving show.
The same outpouring of love and
art continued when Jon and Jill returned to their home in an artists’ building
in Somerville, near Boston, for what was to be a long, hard winter. Their son,
Gabriel, a sophomore at Bates College, took the semester off to stay home and
help. Friends and family brought food and flowers. Helpers and healers came
every day.
Jon continued to decline, and
continued to paint, with the brushes strapped to his hands, helped by his
amazing assistants, Chris Hassig and Adam Eddy, and often
painting side by side with Jill.
He painted portraits, and he
painted flowers. He had always loved the flowers in Jill’s garden; now he was
painting flowers in a vase.
Even at the end, when he couldn’t
use his hands, Jon found a way to paint with the brushes strapped to his head.
In his last days, in Somerville, as the Spring bulbs were just beginning to
arise, he was still painting amazingly beautiful pictures of an orchid plant.
He was an inspiration.
(A version of this story appeared
in the May 1 issue of Island Advantages of Stonington, Maine.)
Thanks to Four Season Farm,
Tinder Hearth, Yellow Birch Farm, Little Island
Oyster Co., David's Folly
Farm.