What Did Richard Karon Want From His Art Career?
Did He Achieve His Objective? Earning a Living? Achieving Fame?
Quite a number of people, who have been reading this biography, of Muskoka artist, Richard Karon, have admitted, being shocked to learn of the artist's tumultuous youth in Poland, in the years, from September 1939 until the war's end in 1945. Even those who knew the artist personally, and shared small-talk for years, are surprised to read about the oppression he and his family suffered at the hands of the Nazi occupiers. It wasn't something he felt comfortable discussing, and he was more contemporary in his conversations, unless it was with family. Even then, he didn't wish to burden them, with what he had learned to handle himself. It is of considerable importance to this biography, because of the fact he felt it necessary to conceal these experiences; events and personal involvements that affected his day to day living for decades. Whether or not he was chased by demons in his mind, or not, some of his characteristics, moods and attitudes, reflected his own suppression of the past. His second wife, Irma, had known of his great interest, in connecting with the family he had lost, and although he didn't make it seem like a mission, on his part, he spent many hours on the phone seeking out the family he had left behind in Poland. He never returned to Poland, after he had escaped the communists in 1948. There will be some readers appalled by what they learn of Poland, at the time, and others who may not fully appreciate the impact it had on the young artist. While this has been addressed in other chapters of this biography, it is also part of the conclusive overview, of the artist in our district, who admittedly, we knew very little about. The fact he had endured a horrible existence, as a young man, didn't make him a good artist. Richard Karon would not have discussed his Polish heritage, at all, if a friend or art patron hadn't inquired. He certainly didn't use his past to gain sympathy for his work, as a survivor of a terrible war. He was humble and modest in this regard, and wished to be judged as all artists are judged…..by the competence of his work, not on his prevailing biography. But his experiences were profound and influential, and can not be minimized, for the purposes of this biography, despite the fact the details may make us uncomfortable.
"Another feature of Nazi rule was the concentration camp; by the summer of 1941 there were more than a dozen of these camps, and hundreds of smaller labour camps and prison centers, scattered throughout the Reich. These camps were filled with German opponents of Nazism, with homosexuals and others judged to be enemies of the new social order, with Polish intellectuals and political prisoners, and, but to a lesser extent, with Jews. Brutality ruled supreme in these camps, where death from savage beatings was a daily event." This passage was written by Holocaust Historian, Martin Gilbert, in his 1981 book, "Auschwitz and the Allies."
"The letter from Bedzin (Poland) went on to tell of 80,000 Jews from German-occupied Western Poland who had been gassed at Chelmno and of the remaining 40,000 Jews of the Lodz ghetto who were sealed in the ghetto 'doomed to die of hunger and wasting away.' Only 20,000 Jews were still alive in Lithuania, in three ghettoes, at Vilna, Kovno and Shauliai. The rest of Lithuania, had become Judenrein, 'purged of all Jews.' As for the cities of Warsaw, Lublin, Czestochowa, and Cracow, each of them once with flourishing Jewish communities, 'today there are no longer any Jews.' They had been exterminated in Treblinka, the famous extermination camp, not only for Polish Jews, but also for Jews from Holland, Belgium and elsewhere," writes Martin Gilbert. Richard Karon was from Czestochowa. He watched it all unfold. He was only eleven years old when the Nazi invasion occurred. In his early twenties, when Karon decided that his past, under Nazi confinement, then to be replaced by the new controlling hand of communism, would have marked the death knell of the artist within, his daring escape with other dissidents, from Poland, must have been a most breath-taking experience, violently teetering between fear and exhilaration. He freed himself from oppression. He was a survivor, and of this, he was proud.
Richard Karon didn't reveal a lot about himself to anyone. He took a lot of secrets to the grave. What he didn't talk about, were those tragedies he clearly couldn't talk about. He did not possess the capability, in his life, to make sense of what he had witnessed in his native Poland, during the Nazi occupation. It would be a parallel situation, for many survivors and witnesses of the Nazi savagery. With Richard Karon, you can put a face to that witness, that survivor, and what revelations he made, to select few individuals over the span of his life, generated the kind of silence he disliked. He didn't wish to shock anyone with the truth of what he had experienced, and witnessed, of Jews being murdered in his community; many he and his family had become friends, beaten publicly, tortured and executed in front of him. It was a message the Nazi occupiers wanted the citizenry to appreciate……that they could meet the same fate. In fact, it was what his mother had received, brutally, when suspected of being somehow connected to the Polish underground. Watching Jewish youngsters, trying to escape their captors, being shot on the streets of his beautiful, historic city, had a profound influence on the soon-to-be artist. He knew, from a young age, the right time to speak, and the wrong time. He understood what Nazi guards wanted to hear, and how it was to be spoken. When he may have wished to strike out, and defend those who were being brutalized, he understood that it would be signing his own death warrant, and potentially warrants for his family. Retaliation, in this young man's position, would have been a short-lived act of misplaced hubris. The reader may be surprised to know just how close to death the young man had been, on many occasions, from September 1939 until 1945. The paintings you may possess, signed Richard Karon, are the result of a man's capability to survive incredible odds. He had been threatened by a Nazi guard, and a gun held to his head, for stealing bread to help his family. If he had been Jewish, the end would have come swiftly, at that moment. The future artist, dead!
We have all had our brushes with death, at one point or the other, during long lives. Most of us though, haven't had such a precarious life and death crisis, extending for more than five years, when at any moment, caused by any suspicion whatsoever, the end could come quickly and without warning. Much as if living in a confined space with poisonous snakes, with no exit strategy except basic survival or suicide. For many, suicide was a viable alternative. It is said that Karon learned to live within the barbs of Nazi occupation, because of his interest in art. It pre-occupied his mind, at a time when all else was a horror unfolding. He did talk about the sights and sounds of war, and explained how horrible it was to see and hear the Jews jammed inhumanely into boxcars, moving along the tracks near his home, screaming for help……when there was no help possible. No act or heroics singularly, would have ended with anything less than death, shot on sight. The boxcars would still have rattled down those silver rails, toward death camps. The hell on earth was that there was so little that could be done, to make even the least amount of difference, to the plight of these Polish citizens, Adolph Hitler wished to exterminate, in his Final Solution.
When you look at one of Richard Karon's art panels, mounted above your fireplace mantle, or hung in a livingroom, or diningroom, or cottage sunroom, you may feel differently, upon reading this biography, and knowing the true story about an artist, who was purposely evasive in life, about the true measure of his past. It was obvious, he felt survivor's guilt, common for those who witness such horrors in life, but are spared to re-enact those tragedies until their own eventual end. A recent figure on the suicides of American veterans, was, if I remember correctly, said to average one every two hours of every day, of every year, due to the mental burdens inflicted by war…..and the return home for what can never be a normal life. In Canada, we are learning much more about the toll of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the downward spiral of returning soldiers who are affected. While there is no evidence Richard Karon ever raised a gun to fight the occupying force, or evidence that he killed a Nazi, as he may have desired, he was witness to enough brutality and death, to have left lasting trauma, that was never treated…..and as such did affect his quality of life, and may have eventually cost him his second marriage to wife Irma.
What I have been impressed by, as the author of this biography, is that Richard Karon found his peace at last, in Muskoka. Of many places in the province he could have set up his art studio, he found a small acreage that suited his interests, in the Township of Lake of Bays……his idea of paradise on earth. The artist had found his vehicle of liberation, working in Muskoka. It's not as if he could leave his PTSD behind him, or avoid having flashbacks, about what he had witnessed, because that was impossible. There is no evidence he had ever attended a therapist, and at this time, little was known about the disorder, and how it affected its sufferers. He found the nature studies best suited to his own feelings, of freedom of expression, democracy and liberation from everything else he had known, including poverty. As he had always been a survivor, even as a young man, having to steal food in order to survive, he had the confidence in himself, that he could generate a good income in Muskoka. He made a sensible decision. While it did take a number of years to earn a following, his paintings weren't depictions of landscapes elsewhere. Many of his scenes were identifiable, and he told those who purchased panels, exactly where the art works had been inspired. These were home-inspired paintings that reflected not only the enchantments of natural Muskoka, but were very much studies of the Township of Lake of Bays. He was proud to be called a local artist by those who knew him. Writer's at the time, who critiqued his work in published reviews, called him a Canadian artist. This must have made him feel enormously proud, of what he had accomplished from his unfortunate start in life.
I think, as his biographer, he would have been very pleased, if a reviewer, even today, was to refer to him as a Polish-Canadian artist, as this would conclusively validate, all the days of his life, invested in the pursuit of this great love for art.
Arguably, Richard Karon escaped through his art. Possibly, during more prolific periods, he simply needed to escape more often. It might be assumed he painted more, to create more product to sell from his home / studio. This wouldn't be a wrong assessment entirely, because he was a man who knew how to hustle in order to provide for his family. There are those who knew him well, and his artwork, who would claim they knew the artist's prevailing mood, by the way the palette knife had been wielded on that particular day. Which is not an uncommon observation to make of artist's and their creative enterprise. Studying his paintings of waterfalls and rapids, one can see how impressed he was by the power generated by the tumble of water over rocks, and the thunder it produced as he sketched at its side. They are quite different from his passive landscapes, that might remind the viewer of postcards they've seen before. Karon began in this way, as a young artist, sketching scenes he found on old postcards, his family, friends and neighbors gave him to copy. It is known that many of the scenes he painted, in Ontario from the early 60's, had been based on photographs taken by the artist, on trips back into the woods. His son, Richard Sahoff Karon, possesses all his father's slides, taken from the 1960's to the 1980's. They are presently stored in the wood chest the artist carved, that reminds his son, when opened, of the wonderful smell of the forest, on the woodlot where the family house had been constructed near Baysville.
It can be said, of Richard Karon, that he felt an uncertain, unspecified amount of guilt throughout his life, for what he had witnessed in Poland, during the Nazi occupation. Events he had witnessed, as close as having smelled the hot smoke of exploded gun-powder, and the sharp ringing in his ear, and the unavoidable scent of death….the sight of so much blood, so much human suffering, and so much exposure to the meaning of death. When you look upon one of his strikingly beautiful, and alluring landscapes, it seems so amazing, reckoning how he found the reason to, so poignantly, celebrate life, and the restorations he found within nature, here in Muskoka. He refused to allow the past to destroy the freedom, he felt had been earned, through hard work, and survival instincts.
Most recently, his son wrote me a profoundly heartfelt email, that he had, just the day before, visited his father's gravesite, in a churchyard in Richmond Hill, Ontario, with the purpose, on that occasion, of letting his father know, people were fondly remembering and celebrating his work once more…….and that his biography was being read by many of his former friends and art patrons, who he had thought so much about, in his studio days, near the Village of Baysville, in the Township of Lake of Bays. As he had only been a child, when his father passed away from lung cancer, in 1987, admittedly, he set about this mission of discovery, as much for his daughter Aurora…….., so she would one day, know more about her grandfather, than he had known. Growing up with very little appreciation for what his father had endured in his life, or the successes he had earned as a respected landscape artist. For his son, the knowledge acquired over the past two years of personal research, and the most recent four months of intensive sleuthing, has been nothing short of remarkable, by his own admission. He wishes to thank all those folks, who knew his father personally, and art owners, who still cherish Karon originals, for taking the time to meet with him, and show him the art works in their possession. He has a much clearer perspective of his father, "poppa" and an appreciation of how his explorations in creativity, were his means of escape……without running away from what were, a plethora of troubling memories. He was not an artist who suffered for his craft. He was very much a creator who benefitted from art. Much as if, by his own design, it was a huge, gaping hole, to a portal of ethereal existence…….much as if he imbedded his soul in every landscape he painted…….a shade of nature…..the artist.
It is the 23rd day of April, 2012. It is snowing. I have just returned from a brisk walk out into the Bog, here at Birch Hollow, and found snow accumulations on the branches of our budding lilacs. The heavy, gusting wind, has already knocked down some of the feeble birches, and the leaves that one neighbor dutifully raked this weekend, have already this afternoon, blown back onto his lawn. There is more snow forecast for our region much later in the day. Despite the inclement weather, and discouraging late season snowfall, the birds are chirping contently in the pine boughs, and the daffodils and tulips in the garden, although snow-dusted, are as cheerful and uplifting as ever. On many occasions, during the first part of this biographic research, which began in early January, there were many warmer days than this chilly, blustery afternoon in South Muskoka. Yet it is the kind of day, I can still wander about these haunted woodlands, and with great optimism, look upon the forest floor of emerging ferns, their green nubs rising from the wet ground cover, and hear the tiny creeks gurgling beneath the mounds of old grasses, and feel in spirit, the strong pull of regeneration, and rebirth, in this wondrous spring of the year. I can look at many scenes, from different vantage points here, and see the exciting opportunities for an artist like Richard Karon, to capture them on canvas. I have enjoyed all the opportunities that have been afforded me, during work on this biography. I will not be able to walk through this lowland again, without feeling I'm in the company of Mr. Karon, making me aware of the art within nature. Without ever intending it, he has been my tutor in art, my mentor in nature studies.
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