My mixed media piece tiled "Wishing I Could Remember the Violets" was selected for the 2011 Healing Muse Upstate Medical Center for Bioethics and Humanities literary and visual journal.
This picture was inspired by my mother's Irish family who lived on Tipperary Hill. I also lived in that neighborhood for several years when I was a child. I had the pleasure of frequently returning to the old neighborhood when my daughter Irish Danced (from ages 7 - 18). I spent many happy hours watching the dancers all practice their steps and thinking about my Irish heritage, and listening to sounds outside like church bells, which I never heard at my house out in the 'burbs. And also, for some unknown reason I have always associated my grandmother with violets. That's where the inspiration for "Wishing I Could Remember the Violets" came from.
Now the picture is all the more poignant as my mother has been diagnosed with dementia and my daughter has gone off to college, and so the days of watching the dancers has ended. Life changes, sometimes fast, sometimes gradually.
And I still have no clue why I am obsessing over violets!?????
Anyway, this is a mixed media piece which started with an abstract watercolor background. Images were created with colored pencil and enhanced with metallic paint and markers; de-emphasized with a layer of thin gauzy rice paper. The people pictured in the painting are my maternal grandparents Peter and Mary Enright.
Joan, I missed this one before. This is absolutely beaufiful. I wish I could have met them, But unfortunately Peter died when our Mom's where young and Mary died 4 days before I was born.
ReplyDeleteThanks Barb. I remember our Grandmother Mary's funeral. My 3rd grade teacher Sister Mary Agnes let me look out the classroom window to watch all the adults going into St. Patrick's Church.
ReplyDeleteI have always wished that I had known our Grandfather Peter. I can guess that with all those kids both of our grandparents must have had a lot of patience!