Today this got me excited. You see not quite a year ago my mother passed away. Yes I've been grieving and processing this for nearly nine months now. Not always easy but necessary, I have been now helping my dad go through everything in their house that they have lived in for some twenty years or so. My mother saved everything. She saved every letter, every card and every magazine clipping that she cut out. She even filed them and labeled them. I often say if she could have, she would have loved, Pinterest. She had her own real live collection of everything she loved in pictures. Amazing what you can learn about a person by what they collect. Another thing that she collected was wrapping paper. She had bags of it. Being an artist and lover of paper and someone who loves to repurpose, I had to keep the wrapping paper and a lot of the paper things. This portrait today is a few pieces of wrapping paper that I have sewed on the sewing machine. I also love sewing and fabric and my mother also was the same. Perhaps it is my way of processing and connecting to those parts of her that are clearly in me. I think she'd be tickled to see what I did with her wrapping paper. The exciting thing to me is that .. now I know what I'm going to do with it .. haha. So . this birthing of an idea makes me HAPPY!!!! And yes my baby is beautiful, she's mine.. but she can be yours. Today, just email me and you can have her for just $12. Acrylic on sewn paper 8"x 12". Thanks for stopping over. I'd love to hear your thoughts. IF you just want me to send you every day's portrait post send me an email and I'll add you to the list.
I love what you have done with today's face. So glad that you used some of your mother's paper.. Grieving is a long process .I can relate. I am excited for you about your new technique on todays face. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteI know i responded to your comment somewhere .. but just wanted to be sure .. thank you, i'm excited about this process also .. and grieving is never fun but necessary. ..
DeleteYou did a wonderful job here Tammy ! And so good you followed your heart in
ReplyDeletedoing the face on these papers ... I think if your mother's looking at you, she
smiles !!! I'm sure of that ;-)
Thank you so much .. this painting is sold too ... so it's all good. It was a fun experiment.
DeleteThis is a lovely tribute to your mother and I'm sure she is pleased with what you're doing with her treasures. My mother was a consummate 'keeper' of things, but unfortunately organization wasn't her forte and she had stuff all over the house. She had alzheimer's towards the end and she was afraid she would forget something that she had read so she clipped every article that was the least bit interesting to her and then stuffed it somewhere, never to see the light of day until I had to go through everything after she died. Sad, but as you say an insight into her thoughts.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry to hear of your mother Mary Anne. My mother too had alzheimer's ... it is an awful way, I think, to finish your life. Yes it's nice to celebrate the good things when we can .. I was able to tell my mother how grateful I was for her persistence in keeping culture in our lives. And yes .. i don't think I knew how much we had in common till now. That is difficult. Thanks for stopping over. :)
DeleteSold
ReplyDeleteThis one is looking towards the future maybe? She has that look about her.
ReplyDeleteI still grieve for my mama, almost 6 years later. But it is not like it was in that first year. It's funny how it still pops up. After my son called to say he proposed to his girlfriend...I hung up the phone and my first thought was "I've got to call mom so we can talk about this"...pause..."Oh ya, I can't" I suppose some things just stay. My mam too saved and saved (it must have been that generation). After her telling us for years that she'd gotten rid of so much, there was nothing left to get rid of, one can't just dispose of all of their worldly belongings ("I only have...")...and so on...my sister and I discovered every cancelled check back to the year I was born. Ditto with every calendar, legal paper, letters and so on! And the list goes on. Suffice to say that we were amazed at much she fit in her small section of their shared house (w/ sister's family). You do learn a lot, but at the same time...she is not here to answer the questions!