From One Human Bean to Another

At the age of 21, in 1979, I designed and painted the seminal mural Recovery 1 while receiving thrice weekly dialysis therapy at Sunnybrook Medical Center in "Toronto the Good".

Photo of  Recovery 1 in 1979.

I embraced the "Recovery" motif as the perfect masthead for the Facebook page that my wife Sharon and I founded a little over two years ago. Called "Kidney Transplant Donors and Recipients" (KTDR), the site garnered an impressive nine-hundred members within the first year. Little did we realize that within a couple of years, the site would explode to over eleven thousand worldwide members!

My best attempt to breathe some contemporary "life" into the fairly low-resolution, hazy, pixelated image.

Now that I was committed to pressing this image into service once again in a high-fidelity format...namely, as the cover art for my Book 1 of the soon-to-be-unleashed memoir "Dancing with Rejection..." my publishing consultant advised me that the (above) artwork appears so severely pixelated aka blurry that it would simply not suffice, should I desire to look professional. I took this as an immediate challenge and decided to respond by creating brand-new, crisp artwork for that purpose.

Getting very close to visualizing the Cover Art for "Dancing..."

An invocation for a successful hunt? It would appear so.

Now, I can say with confidence that the artwork for the cover of "Dancing..." is going to pass muster with nary a revision after this. As the careful observer will note, I have made two conspicuous changes to the design in the 2015 version. First, I have the last (vibrant red) figure on the right-hand side striding with purpose off the edge of the canvas. Second, I have included a "Kidney" motif in the guts of that figure. He is a successful kidney transplant recipient! 

Brand-new, crisp artwork is created in 2015 to dramatically upgrade the quality of the image.

Much as the artists of the Neanderthal Age would have meticulously painted iconic images of bison, deer and hunters deep inside their ceremonial caves, I paint the vibrant figure with his transplanted kidney. In my own way, I am emulating those cave paintings with an "invocation" or "visual prayer" for my own healing once again. Everything has come around full circle...I find myself once again facing down thrice weekly dialysis treatments as I wait and pray for my quest to yield the "Gift of Life". 

Michael R. Gaudet was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure only fourteen years after his father, Robert, died of kidney disease in Michael’s childhood. After his initial diagnosis, Michael was determined to achieve a measure of immortality. 

He designed and painted the seminal mural "Recovery 1", which he donated to the Toronto hospital that saved his life. This singular act cast the mold for the rest of his life, in which he battled chronic kidney disease and forged a career as one of Canada’s best-known mural painters. 

Michael has since designed and painted over 60 large murals across Canada. Today, he lives with his wife Sharon in the resort village of Manitou Beach in central Saskatchewan, where they own and operate a seasonal art gallery called “G-G’s Gallery & Gifts.” 

Michael is in the final stages of releasing Book 1 of the trilogy "Dancing with Rejection: A Beginner's Guide to Immortality". Please steer your search engine here to visit the Facebook page that was created to usher in the launch. Curious? Could this be the book for you? Come on over, we'll see you there.