We woke up early. Tom exercised in the spare room, and I went for a walk through the neighborhood. We tried to get our morning routines done so that we could begin working by eight or 8:30 a.m. Working from home had its advantages, but staying in bed late or working in our pajamas was not part of the routine.
We sat across the table and ate breakfast as we had every day since moving to our home ten years before. Tom had his daily breakfast of champions: an omelet filled with fresh greens, toast, a cup of kefir, and grapefruit, followed by a shot of espresso; mine was yogurt, a piece of toast, and some tea. He looked at an art book on the table while he ate, and I surfed the socials for the latest news to share with him from my phone.
Every once in a while, an artist friend made a post on social media that irritated me. That day, someone complained online about not receiving a public art commission. I thought it was in bad taste to complain about it publicly—what was the purpose? We have received so many rejections over the years; it’s part of the process. Tom said, “I guess it couldn’t be that the art was not what they were looking for, or maybe they need to improve.” Whenever Tom’s work was rejected, he said, “It’s the art; I have to keep getting better.” Many of the artists I observed on the internet seemed to make little advancement in their work. If they had a modicum of success with an idea, they repeatedly created similar versions of the work for many years.
Inundated with art on social media, I felt burnt out. My cynicism and lousy attitude came from the ten years I had spent ensuring Tom’s work was visible to our modest orbit with the hope that one day, the right person would discover him. This work did have a positive side; it was a form of socializing for me. After we closed our gallery, Uncle Freddy’s, we worked from home, and I could easily go for weeks without interacting with people in person. The computer kept me connected with our friends and the art community and up to date on what happened in the rest of the world.
As I washed the breakfast dishes, I thought about how Tom’s Luddite ways had protected him from the technological overload that afflicted so many people. Tom was not bombarded with thousands of Instagrammable art images every day, so many that it was hard to discern the quality and what was good. It all blurred into a single generic image. Tom voraciously studied his expansive art book collection. The artwork within his growing library received the blessing of art history and was worthy of examination, study, and recognition. I was glad that he spared himself the exposure to the internet, with my help, of course. How could many contemporary artists in 2019 say that they had never sent an email? Technically, Tom had, but not without me to type it and hit send.
Tom was preparing to go out landscape painting for the day, and I came into his studio to hang out as he packed up. I plopped into the comfy chair across from his painting wall; on it were about 20 landscape paintings, a mixture of acrylics and watercolors. He spent the summer painting a mural with Billy in LaPorte, a town about an hour from our home. To avoid the extreme heat and the raking light on the wall, he worked from 5 am to noon each day, only to come home, eat lunch, and then go out landscape painting in the afternoon. I didn’t know where he got the energy. It must have been meditative and relaxing for him; he was always happiest when out in nature. By the time he got home late each afternoon, he was hungry and exhausted.

His landscape paintings have changed so much since we first met. The early works were far more colorful and heavy-handed, quite different from the natural palette and nuanced brushwork of the pieces in front of me. His work evolved with maturity and experience; he had stopped trying to develop a signature style to impress people in the contemporary art world. If they knew enough about art, they would recognize the merit of these works. He looked at nature and painted it and knew that he could not improve upon what was in front of him; he remained faithful to what he saw and suppressed his ego while he painted. Tom’s increasing alarm about the environment and climate change contributed to his desire to capture posterity’s modern landscape.
I walked Tom to the car, looking forward to having the house to myself and diving into some neglected projects. We kissed and hugged, and I told him, “Be careful, have fun, and do a good job.”
I returned to the house, made myself some more tea, and went up to my office to continue working on my inventory and files. I retired files from the previous year’s projects to symbolically make room for new opportunities each year. I gathered the closed and completed files and walked the boxes to the storage room. Things had stacked up. If I opened the boxes, I could revisit every project we had done over the past 18 years. Our history’s physical documents were extensive: the lease agreement from our original gallery, CVs of our gallery artists, and the correspondence about Tom’s accepted show proposal at the Hyde Park Art Center. There were countless exhibition postcards, catalogs, brochures, newspaper clippings, receipts, and many rejection letters throughout the boxes. My favorites were the letters from our artist friends and collectors; they were comforting reminders of the people with us along the way.
Seeing the sum of our experiences in file boxes filled me with excitement. Like the first time many years ago when Tom and I sat across from each other in his studio as we shared our ideas about art and decided to work together. There was still more to do, more opportunities to seek out. We were older now and had weathered many setbacks, personal and professional, but we were still standing. We were happy to keep working as long as we were able.
I took a break and walked through the native garden out back, visiting the cool blue asters, goldenrod, and cardinal flowers as they started to dry up. Two viceroy butterflies fluttered back and forth from plant to plant. It was the last show for the season.
When I returned to my desk, I found a few new emails; one had Tom’s name in the subject line, and I clicked it.
Dear Ms. Dorman,
My name is Marilee Browning. I am the curatorial assistant to Alexandra S. Wolfe, the newly appointed Curator of Contemporary American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. When going through the files of Ms. Wolfe’s predecessor, we came upon a voluminous file on Tom Torluemke containing materials received from you, dating as far back as 2003.
After viewing all the materials, Ms. Wolfe has expressed that his contributions are worthy of further investigation and would like to meet Mr. Torluemke and discuss possible opportunities for his work. She would like to schedule a studio visit when she comes to the Midwest next month.
Please let us know if Tom is available to do a visit, and we will respond with potential dates and times.
Best,
Marilee Browning
Curatorial Assistant
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
I must have sat there for an hour as I read the email over and over. Finally, I called Tom. I got his voicemail. My heart was beating fast; I hung up and called again. There was no sense in leaving a message; I was the one who listened to them.
Antsy and irritated, I walked over to my sister Jennie’s house, three doors down. Jennie was my little sister and treated me with the respect that comes with the role, but she could kick my ass if we ever got into a tangle; she was a force to be reckoned with. As I walked in, their dog Daisy ran up to greet me with kisses as I told Jennie about the email. I read it to her with tears in my eyes, and we shared high fives and a hug. We talked about what it could mean for us to have someone of this stature take an interest in Tom. She was almost as excited as I was. Of all the people in my life, Jennie knew intimately what Tom and I experienced living the artist’s life; she patiently listened to my ideas, plans, and gripes as we took walks together each morning. Jennie was quantitatively more successful than me. She had a master’s in mathematics and a doctorate in education and was a tenured professor. But she had a deep admiration for Tom and for our creative spirit and dedication to our practice. When she knew we were in a bind, she bought a painting, and she took me out for tea or lunch and mani-pedis to keep me looking and feeling good. I did not spend money on these extras even though I enjoyed them; our budget was too tight. It was hours before Tom returned, so we went for a long walk around the neighborhood to manage our excitement.

When Tom finally came home, I ran to him and said, “I have something to tell you!” He said he needed to get his stuff out of the car first. I was nearly jumping out of my skin, but he said, “Let me go to the bathroom first.” I paced around the room like a caged tiger and nearly lunged at him when he was finished. I blurted out the news. I read the email to him a couple of times. He was stunned for a few moments, then said, “Maybe I haven’t been fooling myself all these years.” With tears in my eyes, I said, “No, you haven’t been a fool; no matter what happens, this has all been for something.”
The next month was a flurry. Tom prepared artwork to show Alexandra Wolfe, made repairs to the house, and cleaned up the yards and garden. We discussed what to show her in the 3 hours she allotted for the visit. Tom always asked for my opinions and valued them. My ideas for the meeting were more reserved than his. He had been preparing for this his whole life; his instincts were bolder than mine, so I kept my opinions to myself. If I objected strongly to a particular piece of work, I let him know.
The day before Ms. Wolfe arrived, Tom worked in his studios, setting things up and making last-minute changes to pieces about which he had second thoughts. I spent the day thoroughly cleaning the house and ran out to get snacks and drinks to serve our guest. By the end of the day, we were exhausted but exhilarated. That night, we lay in bed and talked about our hopes and fears for the coming day; we hoped she would feel it was worth the trip.
It was a fitful night. We got up early to take a long walk. I tried to distract Tom by reminding him of funny stories. When we got back to the house, we ate breakfast, showered, and assumed our positions in the front living room to wait for Ms. Wolfe’s arrival. Finally, we saw a car pull up to the house. Tom walked out to greet her.
I awoke with a start, my eyes opened wide, and I saw Tom lying next to me in the early dawn light. He breathed softly, and I looked at his peaceful face that I loved and knew so well. The wide-eyed man with the overbite and the incredible imagination who had made my life so rich, happy, and full of purpose. It was disappointing to realize that it was just a dream, but isn’t that what we had been doing all along? Nothing had changed. We had no other option but to keep doing what we were doing.
