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Every time Alan Warburton saw George Westren walking the halls of his London apartment building, his neighbor was carrying a blue duffel messenger bag.
“I always speculated about what he was carrying,” said Warburton, 41, who chatted a bit with Westren about the weather or the building’s below-average water pressure.
After years of wondering what Westren kept in her tattered blue bag, Warburton finally got her answer last week: She was carrying her own artwork that, in a cruel twist, was nearly thrown in the trash.
It all started about a year ago, when neighbors realized they hadn’t seen Westren in a while and called the police. He was found dead in his tiny rental apartment, where he had lived alone since 1999. He was 75 years old.
“It kept lurking in my mind,” Warburton, also an artist, said of his neighbor’s unexpected death.
Warburton, who lives with his partner in the unit below Westren’s, decided to try to learn more about him.
After a quick Google search, Warburton learned that his neighbor had struggled with addiction and turned to art to help him heal.
“As an artist, I felt an affinity with George,” Warburton said, adding that Westren’s cause of death was not publicly disclosed.
Westren’s apartment remained as she had left it for a year, until June 20, when a crew hired by the local housing association suddenly showed up to empty it. From the unit below him, Warburton, who isn’t sure why he spent a year before the unit was cleared, heard the commotion.
He ventured upstairs, where he saw six workers going through Westren’s belongings. He soon saw that there were hundreds of felt tip drawings stacked around the unit. They all headed for the garbage.
Warburton quickly realized that he was the only person standing between his neighbor’s meticulous abstract artwork and the garbage can. He remembered thinking, “If I don’t keep George’s artwork, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life.”
He grabbed as much art as he could and took it back to his apartment, making multiple trips. He spent the next few hours dusting piles of folders, amazed by his neighbor’s geometric creations.
“I’ve just seen hundreds of these pristine, beautiful works of art,” said Warburton, who tried to track down members of Westren’s family to give them the art, but had no luck. “They are professional quality. He had talent.”
“I wanted people to see this,” Warburton said. “You don’t just rescue beautiful works of art from the trash every day.”
Warburton recounted the story in a Twitter thread, which quickly circulated with thousands of shares, likes and comments. Throughout the thread, he shared images of Westren’s work.
“George Westren, sweet boy. As far as I know, he had a hard life, but art was a lifeline for him,” Warburton wrote in a tweet.
“It is a great privilege to see all this work that must have been carefully accumulated over the years, each requiring so much patience and control,” he said in another.
Comments poured in, much of it coming from people who knew and admired Westren and his artwork. Warburton was delighted.
“The most charming and gentle man!” one person wrote. “One of his pieces is in my hallway. Thank you for sharing and for saving his work. ”
“I remember George saying that making art gave him focus and helped him live with purpose,” read another tweet. “We definitely need to do something to help preserve his work.”
Warburton privately connected with people who knew Westren well in hopes of learning more about him.
Kim Noble, meanwhile, helped shed light on Westren’s life. He was Westren’s art instructor for nearly two decades.
Noble, 47, led an art group for people with mental health issues, and Westren was one of the original members of the weekly class. When they met, Westren was living on the streets.
“He was homeless for quite a while in his life and really struggled with alcoholism,” Noble said. “She had no interest in art at all, and then one day she went into an exhibition to get out of the rain.”
The exhibit was the work of Bridget Riley, a British painter famous for her op art paintings. Westren was inspired by her.
“He saw something in these images, and he just started drawing. He became an artist,” Noble said. “As he used to say, that saved his life.”
He quit drinking and got an apartment in an affordable housing community, where he eventually died and where Warburton lives today, Noble said. In his last years, art was Westren’s whole world.
“The process for George was as important as the result,” he said. “He just drew and drew and drew.”
To Noble’s knowledge, Westren never married or had children, although “George is a very private person,” he said. “This group and his friends within this group were his family.”
Noble also knew that despite being a quiet man, Westren wanted his art to have an audience. He once attended an art exhibit for Noble and brought a small folder of his own drawings to display.
“He wanted people to see his work,” Noble said, adding that he featured Westren in several episodes of a podcast series he recorded in 2020. In a segment on mental health and fear, Westren was asked how he copes. the difficult moments. .
“Just go ahead and fight the world. It’s not an easy fight,” she replied.
When Noble found out his friend had died, “I was pretty devastated,” he said. “He was a good man.”
Henry McWilliams, who has lived in the same building as Westren and Warburton for more than 20 years, said Westren was a friendly neighbor and always had a portfolio of drawings.
“Every day, I would go out and try to show it off somewhere,” said McWilliams, 71. “It is unfortunate that he passed away before he got recognition.”
Now, however, “he will not be forgotten,” McWilliams said.
Warburton is trying to see that through. His goal, he said, is “to give George the legacy he deserves.”
After countless people on social media and in London asked to buy Westren’s art, Warburton came up with a plan. Although he is not selling the original drawings, he did make copies of 30 unique pieces. They are now available to order online, and the proceeds will be used to create an exhibit of Westren’s work and preserve it in perpetuity, he said. Any additional funds will be donated to a cause that would have been close to Westren’s heart, Warburton said, adding: “I just want to do the right thing by George.”
It’s a bittersweet story, he said, sad and beautiful in equal measure.
“The story behind the work, that’s really what gives it meaning,” Warburton said. “If people can attach meaning to art, it becomes infinitely valuable.”
Source: www.washingtonpost.com