old friends…

“Each one shows the batters, bruises and mends
that are part and parcel of the life of a well-loved bear.”

Beth Van Hoesen began painting what would become a suite of three-dozen paintings of teddy bears in 1995. She started with a simple watercolor-and-tempera rendering of a friend’s roly-poly stuffed bear. Word spread, and bears began arriving, almost unbidden, to pose for her.

Beth and her husband, the artist Mark Adams, lived on San Francisco’s Noe Hill in a stately 1909 firehouse they’d purchased for a pittance at auction. That was 1959, a good time to be a young artist in San Francisco, also the time when abstract expressionism began to prevail. They, however, chose to remain in the less fashionable, less lucrative realist camp.

I got acquainted with Mark in 2001, when he allowed Fair Oaks to use one of his paintings for the cover of The Perfect Dinner cookbook. Visiting his studio on the ground floor of old Engine Co. No. 44, I noticed dozens of little paintings of teddy bears arrayed on a wall. Although no two were much alike in size or style, they were all by Beth. I commented that they could be a book, and Mark said they were showing them to the publisher of their previous several books. I forgot about the teddy bears until he phoned a few months later to say their publisher was more interested in teddy bear greeting cards than a book. Was I interested?

Beth was known far and wide as a printmaker, her subject matter drawn from life: newborn infants, animals, flowers, even drag queens—the sorts of things that elicit smiles. Humility, beauty and light imbue everything she committed to paper. But by then she was wheelchair bound, and I came to understand that Mark’s encouraging her to paint the bears and then our creating this book were about keeping her active and engaged. He was devoted to her—much to the detriment of his own fine work.

Producing a little book filled with charming images of teddy bears should have been a joyful experience—indeed, it was that and more. Over those months, as Mark and Beth welcomed me like an old friend into their home, I came to adore them both. He would design the book, and for hours, we sat side by side at my Mac cutting and pasting, trying this, then trying that. He had never used a computer and was fascinated by the ease of seeing that every image, font and bit of text was just so. The result is this beautiful little book.

Mark’s death came unexpectedly in 2006, and Beth died four years later. Only their art survives them, and the teddy bear paintings were bequeathed to the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital.

—Don Roberts, publisher

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