This photo was taken the year my mother died. I am in father’s studio in the front room of our old house on Duffossat St. This is my first palette, hand carved and given to me as a gift for either Christmas or my birthday that same year; I don’t remember which. My mother was shot easter week so that event eclipsed most of the year’s other details for me.
I remember this day in the photograph. It was hot, I roller skated on the front porch while my father worked on a painting. He made me take my roller skates off before entering the house. I tiptoed around the spot where I saw my mother die in front of her piano, then walked into his painting studio barefoot.
Paintings will always commemorate life for me. Museums, artists, what other people see, paint, and think. It is all important. Art will always be an act of living for me.
