Long Island Painter Succumbs to ALS

After fighting ALS, Huntington Bay, Long Island, painter Mark Kuhn died at the age of 57 on Wednesday, March 4, 2009. He was racing to finish a last series of paintings he called, “The Lifeline Series.”

In a Newsday story that ran on Friday, March 06, 2009, his wife Donna Simonetti said that he had produced enough paintings for a full show. "He left one unfinished painting and one blank canvas," she mentioned. A show featuring “The Lifeline Series” of paintings is scheduled to be exhibited at the Art League of Long Island this July, 2009. The Art League has said that the show will go on.

Kuhn’s plight was documented in a Newsday article that ran the Sunday right before died. The story, titled, “Huntington Bay artist painting against the clock” highlighted Kuhn’s struggle to continue producing his art despite the debilitating illness.

"It's got to be very uncomfortable and very hard, so there's a lot of will there to do it,” Lon S. Cohen, Director of Communications for The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter was quoted as saying in the article about Kuhn’s desire to continue to work.

Last year, during the The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter’s Long Island Walk to Defeat ALS, Mark Kuhn’s T-shirt design for his family’s Walk Team, called team “Making Our Mark” won the first place prize for best T-shirt design on the day of the event.

The Newsday article says that “in addition to his wife, Kuhn is survived by a daughter, Paige, and a son, Bennett, both of Huntington Bay; his mother, Kathryn Kuhn of Minneapolis; a brother, Matthew Kuhn of Corcoran, Minn.; and two sisters - Gabriel Ross of St. Paul, Minn., and Georgia Kuhn of Coon Rapids, Minn.”

The Kuhns request donations to the ALS Association in lieu of flowers. Information can be found at web.alsa.org/goto/markkuhn.