A Chessboard for My Father

Text and image by Keith Mason              

     A continuous string of panic attacks, coupled with depression and anxiety, forced me to resign from a job I thought would be my last career. Adding to my unstable mental state was the declining health of my father, which deteriorated to the point where he was given only months to live.             

     At some point, I made the decision that art would be my way of financially supporting my family. The art journey began with me looking at landscaping, which dovetailed into looking at the building of decks, gazebos and eventually furniture. My family was apprehensive at the thought of me being an artist, as all my preceding jobs had been in the pharmaceutical industry. 

     A specialist at the Cleveland Clinic stated that he was not sure how my father was still alive. I wanted my father, before he died, to see my dream of art manifest, which until this moment had been a dream unrealized. 

     My father taught me the game of chess when I was young. So I decided to build a chessboard for him as both a gift to a man I admired and as an example of the artistic creativity I believed I harbored. 

     I completed the chessboard before he died and my father seemed amazed by it, making my father one of the first people to see my dream of art manifest. Today, that chessboard is at my house, where I get to continue the chess tradition with my sons, as an artist.