"The drawings tell a Tobey story," Rebecca Tobey
says, pointing to some on the great bear's body that depict ghosts. You
know how in the West at night, she asks, you might hear a breeze or the
wind, and it sounds like voices?
"Gene always believed that what you're hearing are the people and living
things that came before," she says to the sound of the wind rustling
through the branches of an aspen nearby. Thunder rolls from slowly
approaching thunderclouds.
"It's amazing, isn't it?" she says.
It's not something to fear, just as the imposing grizzly should not be
feared, but instead respected and acknowledged for its manlike traits,
she says.
Rebecca, 58, grew
up the daughter of an Oak Ridge scientist in east Tennessee, where she
also gained a deep affinity for animals and nature.
They met in Santa Fe in 1984 when Gene showed some of his work in the
gallery where she worked, and a year later, they were married. They
blended a family of five children, now all grown, including two who have
become artists themselves.
Rebecca says she still senses Gene in her
life. He's still in the house, in their artwork, in pictures on the
walls, in her soul.
She admits candidly she's not ready to
give up the collaboration. She may never give it up, though she
acknowledges that no one can say what will happen tomorrow.
"We were two pieces of the same puzzle," she says.
"There was never competition over a piece,'! she says. "It was always a
true collaboration of two people creating one piece of art."
After Rebecca's world changed, she's had to face doubts, from
within; and from galleries, about what happens now. She's resolved to
carryon by finishing the pieces they had started, and by continuing to
create new artwork. '
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