Death on the Mountain

Someone the artist knew at college, a pretty high-profile artist, committed suicide on Saturday. He had been walking alone through some woodlands in the mountains to the chilly north after parking his car by a roadside. There were no further details but I have since discovered he was found hanging from a tree. It was the last day of his exhibition in the capital to the south. He was only 41. The artist here was shocked when I told her by phone and very sad. I had just read about it on the train as the sun came out and slapped a brilliant and perhaps incongruous light on the suddenly fragile glassy skyscrapers across the river. I met the artist in question a few times myself. I remember his vagueness and slight discomfort as he leaned against the bar like the man our 5-year-old son stitched together the day this artist died. It is all indeed very sad and must be particularly gruesome for his surviving family, in particular his mother and brother. There have been a few mountain suicides in the news lately. Unhelpfully, I always love walking the hills alone. OK, you are disconnected from one major aspect of life, namely your network of friends and family, but for me this is more than compensated by the even deeper connection, arguably, with nature and epic space. Additionally, you are put into some kind of mercilessly true and ultimately helpful perspective. Anyway, the idea here is not to be morbid. The victim was part of a famous group of artists and on one level had everything an artist could wish for. He was successful. He was loved. He was not poor. Or was his problem deeper than that? Was he the victim of too much hype? Did he see through the unscholarly adulation and come to believe the critic who described his work as frustratingly slight? There is perhaps only one thing worse than being a great artist who is not recognised and that is being a poor one who is considered great. 'I wish someone could have reached him,' said the artist tonight.