James Ulrich: The darkness and the light

FOR MUCH of his artistic life, Jim Ulrich painted trees - intense, glowing trees, trees that exuded life and warmth and light. His trees look like candle flames, simple and abstract and perfectly centered in the middle of the canvas, bright beacons of hope and aspiration amid a surrounding darkness.

Last Halloween morning, the 51-year-old Springfield artist got up, drove his teen-age son to school, and then returned home and hanged himself in his wife's studio. She found his body when she came home for lunch that day. Ulrich - graduate of Yale University, son of a minister, respected artist, husband and father, a man who loved Walker Percy and who read ``The Odyssey'' once a year - had finally lost a decade-long battle with depression. He left a note in which he said he was sorry, that he loved his wife and son, but he couldn't stand the pain any longer. Nine months later, Ulrich's wife and friends are still coming to terms with his shocking death.

Kathy Caprario met her future husband in 1975 in a painting class at the Art Students League of New York City, where both studied with abstract expressionist painter Theodoros Stamos. She walked into a studio one day and saw a pair of cowboy boots sticking out from below an easel. For Caprario, a Catholic girl from New Jersey, cowboy boots were a big hit. "That was really exotic," she laughed over coffee one recent afternoon. "I'd traveled in Egypt. I'd studied in France. But I'd never been west of Philadelphia, so anything west of Philadelphia was really intriguing." She was also attracted by Ulrich's easy-going, understated character. Caprario was Italian, garrulous and volatile. Ulrich came from Minnesota. He was thoughtful, intelligent and quiet. "And very creative," she said. "I was just amazed by the work he presented in critique, the level of his thought processes about his work. He was extremely well educated. Well read. And kind, to boot. Not arrogant. A lot of people in academics have this arrogance."

Ulrich was familiar with Eugene, having visited here one summer. The couple came here in 1977, in time for Eugene's glory days as a nationally known, out of the way cultural center. "The atmosphere was open," she recalled. "It was like a vacation in a way, a vacation that was prolonged and prolonged. We made some extremely good connections and friendships." Both became successful artists, exhibiting their work and teaching at the University of Oregon and at Lane Community College. Caprario has been primarily known here for her tiny, tightly drawn imaginative landscapes. Though less well known in the community than his more outgoing wife, Ulrich exhibited steadily around the state. He had work in the 1987 Oregon Biennial. He was regularly in the Eugene Mayor's Art Show. Last year he had a piece in the 31st Willamette Valley Juried Exhibition.

Bob DeVine met Ulrich in 1979 at an artists' critique group. "He was dressed all in black," recalled DeVine, an artist who became Ulrich's partner in a house-painting business that paid the bills. "We'd meet every week and look at one another's work and go to different studios and critique each other. He would always give you as positive feedback as he could. But he was always honest. I really appreciated that." Ulrich's trees took root deep in his spirit. In 1987, for his master of fine arts project at the University of Oregon, he wrote this artist's statement: "For the past several years, the subject of each of my paintings has been a single tree. The format has remained deliberately simple: The tree stands in the center of the canvas and there are suggestions of a darkened landscape surrounding it. Most often the tree is illuminated from within. The light transforms the tree from a naturalistic form into a symbolic form." The statement goes on to articulate the religious and spiritual references invoked by the tree paintings, from Byzantine icons to Norse mythology and the work of Carl Jung.

Eugene lawyer and arts patron Roger Saydack, who had known Ulrich since the early 1980s, called the tree paintings simple and elegant. "They are not the kind of images you analyze when you see them," Saydack said. "You respond to them. They are extremely strong, compelling images. There is something of him in those paintings. How would I articulate it? I'm not sure. It's a little close to his death to try to figure that out in some ways." One of Ulrich's tree paintings was selected for the 1991 Oregon Bach Festival poster.

Ulrich's depression was diagnosed nine years ago. "I have no idea where it started," Caprario said. "It probably had its roots long before I met him. It's very hard to understand. Just as you can't experience the physical agony of someone suffering cancer, you can't fully appreciate the actual pain and suffering of someone with a mental disorder. How can you?" DeVine remembers seeing Ulrich physically fall apart one day about that time. "We're working at this house and it's lunch time and he's sweating. I think this is really weird. It's not that laborious what we're doing. Jim is sitting in this meditative stance. He started telling me about the visions he'd had the night before." Ulrich was treated with medication - he settled on Paxil after trying a number of antidepressant drugs - and successfully kept the depression in check for several years.

But then about two years ago his condition worsened. That's when he began seriously thinking of suicide, his wife said. Both he and his wife were stymied in their search for solutions to the depression. Ulrich wasn't drinking or abusing drugs. He was living right. Nothing seemed to work. "The drugs stopped working," Caprario said. "He was exercising. He was doing counseling on a regular basis. He was trying to hit it from all these different points of view. My husband wanted to live. He did not want to die." Ulrich started taking long drives alone up the McKenzie River. Over the next two years he would attempt suicide three times. The first time he left Caprario a note, drove up the river, then called and said he was coming home. That time he went into the hospital for a month's treatment. Another time he disappeared, Caprario called the police. A state trooper found him up the river and he was hospitalized again.

DeVine knew his friend and partner was depressed, but he never knew about the suicide attempts. Others knew even less. Saydack, for example, knew almost nothing of Ulrich's problems. "I had heard that he was having some issues with depression but didn't know Jim in a way that I would get into those with him," he said. But DeVine knew his partner was in trouble. "When he didn't show up for work, that was such a radical thing," he said. "A year ago in April he didn't show up."

It was the first clear day after a spell of rain that had kept the men from house painting. DeVine didn't mind the winter breaks in their routine. "I had the ability to say I'll take the time and go work in the studio," he says. "For some reason Jim didn't have room in his mind for that." He got home that night to a message from Caprario: "Jim is in the hospital."

DeVine visited Ulrich at Sacred Heart. He looked catatonic. "Bob," Ulrich told him, "I can't think my way out of this." During the last months, Ulrich's life assumed a surreal quality for Caprario, who lived every day in fear that he would disappear. "His illness had the quality of a terminal illness," she said. "It was progressive. It was debilitating." She survived, she said, because she had to. "How can you live day to day and keep a family together?" she said. "You just do it. You just do what it takes. There is very little time for `woe is me.' " Last summer Ulrich seemed to get better. He was working on a commissioned project for the new Eugene Public Library, a series of three of his tree paintings that were to be installed in reading nooks. But as fall days grew shorter and darker, so did Ulrich's mood. DeVine noticed it. So did Caprario.

The week before he died, Ulrich didn't show up for work again one morning. "It's October," DeVine said. "A glorious day. And we're working outside. And Jim didn't show up. I thought, `Oh God, he's going to the river again.' So I just work, and get done, and go to my girlfriend's house. Next thing I know Jim is on the front porch. `I'm really sorry, Bob. I had a really bad night.' ''

That was Friday. On Tuesday, Ulrich had to go out and pick up some paint for a job they were working on, DeVine recalled. "He comes back and he's, like, really upset about the price of the paint. He's sweating. He's sweating profusely. And he's really upset about the price of the paint." That same Tuesday, the day before he died, Ulrich saw his counselor and had a good session, Caprario said. "But he was fidgety. He seemed distant. I knew that things were not good. He was going downhill fast." She resolved to call the doctor the next day. On Wednesday morning, Halloween day, DeVine called Ulrich at home and got no answer. They were due at a painting job at 10 o'clock and DeVine would be a little late. He figured Ulrich was taking his son to school. DeVine left a message. When he arrived at the job a little after 11 a.m., Ulrich wasn't there.

"I think, oh God, Jim's not here. He wasn't here Friday, either. I don't think this is a good sign."

Not much later, Caprario arrived home and saw her husband's car still parked there. She walked into the house and saw the note on the counter. "I knew everything had hit the fan," she said.

She ran through the house and found him hanging from a rafter in her tiny studio. "I tried to lift him up, but already - you could just tell," she said. She called 911 and screamed hopelessly for help. Police arrived within minutes, but it was far too late. The note said that Ulrich knew he was getting really sick again, and he couldn't take it. "He couldn't go though it again," Caprario said. "He loved us very much. He was very sorry, and he loved us very much. But he was just too sick."

Frank Ratti, chief deputy medical examiner for Lane County, was one of the first people notified of Ulrich's death, but not simply for professional reasons. Ratti had been Ulrich's friend and neighbor for years. Springfield is a small enough town that the police knew of their friendship. "Frank, I've got bad news," the call that morning began. Ratti went right out to the house, not as a medical examiner but as a friend. He was never involved in the investigation or handling Ulrich's body, by choice. His place, as he put it, was in the front of the house, with Caprario.

Ratti remains frustrated, perplexed and even angry about his friend's death and uncertain of his own role in failing to prevent it. In the end, though, he said Ulrich got as good psychiatric care as it's possible for anyone to get in Oregon - and still he killed himself. "There is a part of Jim I ignored and didn't want to hear about," Ratti said. "I can understand depression. But compulsion? Compulsive behavior and compulsion is a part of suicide that is less talked about and diagnosed, but was certainly part of Jim's behavior. It was certainly documented. The feeling of the person that this is inevitable and they have to do this. The thought keeps coming back. That aspect of suicide may be common. And it's not as well or as frequently discussed."

Lane County sees 40 to 50 suicides each year, Ratti said. And Ulrich fits the pattern perfectly: male, white, middle aged. "Everyone calls me about teen-age suicides," Ratti said. "I can usually find one a year. It's not teen-age suicide that's the problem. It's grown men. Educated white men who want to kill themselves. You don't hear that proclaimed as a crisis." What was unusual about Ulrich's death, Ratti said, was that he had received medical treatment.

"Jim had so many people trying to intervene," Ratti said. "The fact that he was suicidal was fairly public. As much was done to prevent him from killing himself as is done for almost anybody. In that sense, there is a fatalistic aspect to it. That could be part of the compulsiveness."

The funeral was held Monday afternoon - All Saints Day - at Central Lutheran Church, a congregation known for its elegant music and ceremony. Ulrich had designed the seasonal banners that hang in the church for Advent, Christmas and Easter. He had sung in the choir there. Hundreds of mourners turned out - artists and art lovers, friends and family - filling the pews of the large modern church on a beautiful fall afternoon. The processional hymn was upbeat, a triumphant anthem: "For All the Saints." A pastel self portrait by Ulrich sat on display in the church lobby. Ratti and DeVine were pallbearers and both spoke at the service. "Jim had faith for many things more than I," Ratti told the mourners. "Perhaps faith for eternal life more than life itself."

Before his death, Ulrich and Caprario had decided to build him a separate studio at their Springfield home. After his death, Caprario hesitated, then decided to complete the new studio and use it herself. "I can't go into my own studio now," she said. In fact, she has filled her old studio with stacked boxes since finding her husband dead there. Caprario's life has been on hold. She's alternately angry, sympathetic and defensive about Ulrich. "There are times I am so mad at him," she said. "You should hear me driving down the highway, cursing a blue streak. And yet I really admire him. He put up a huge fight against the illness. He didn't want to die." Ratti gets angry, too. "I was pissed when I was mowing his lawn because he wasn't here to do it," the friend said. "The lesson I learned was how profound depression is. And how hidden and unfathomable it was to me. That's what everybody learned."

Caprario doesn't know where her own art is headed. "I know I can't paint the little landscapes I was painting," she said. "They would not feel right to me now." So now she is looking deep into her past to find a new artistic future, making sketches, taking notes, playing with ideas she had more 20 years ago. "The idea of journey has always been a part of my work," she said. "It will be through the process that I discover where I'm going."

Ulrich's final work was his set of three tree paintings for the Eugene Public Library. After some initial nervousness about their state of completion - Caprario said she had to finish a couple of the frames, but the paintings themselves were done - the library has accepted the work as planned. "They are poignant paintings," Caprario said. "That light winning out over the darkness. In Jim's paintings, the light always won out."

July 28, 2002