Mom's Nature Paintings
Her limited personal legacy. Mother's Day Series part 2 of 4
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I’ve posted this story in other places but I wanted to revisit it again to honor my mom for Mother's Day. In the spirit of this series, I’m acknowledging traditional families as well as those of us who are not moms, who no longer have moms, or are estranged from our mothers. Regardless of our situations, we can all appreciate the gift of life our mothers have given to us. For me, I also celebrate my mom's sensitivity and hidden creativity.
My mom was a painter. She worked with acrylics and painted about a dozen pictures from nature photos that she clipped from old magazines or adapted from old greeting cards.
It’s obvious that my mom was an artist, but most people who have an artistic bend have a passion that drives them to create their work. If my mom had a passion for painting, we certainly weren't aware of it. (By the way, my mom had twelve children.) I know that in her early years of motherhood she enjoyed cake decorating, but as the kids kept coming, she put that aside. I only knew about it because I found some of her equipment - cake molds, piping bags and tips - in the out-of-reach kitchen cupboards.
One day when I was in grade school, she signed up for a painting course at the community center, and suddenly she was standing in the basement in front of an easel wearing an old blue shirt and mixing colors and shades on a piece of white cardboard.
I remember her first painting, a simple winter scene—a white house with a black roof, a snow-covered ground and a gray sky. (Most likely, the house did not have insulation.) She worked on it one year in Jan. and Feb., and it seemed to take a long time.
My dad teased her. "The more you paint, the more it snows! Will you PLEASE finish that painting so spring can come?"
Eventually she did finish, and then went on to paint several nature scenes. My dad sometimes made frames for her out of plywood that she stained or dabbed with paint and then coated with a clear sealant. Other times the frames were store-bought. Dad also helped her stretch more canvases after her class had ended. She never named her pictures, so we came up with our own references for them.
Another painting I remember was her spring picture with the birds. (I think the picture came from a National Geographic Magazine.) Using a different technique, she marked off a grid on the photo with a pencil and then measured and drew in the corresponding lines on the canvas. The birds became a source of frustration for her, though.
"I just can't seem to draw these birds in correctly," she lamented.
So then my dad dusted off the old projector, put it on top of the magazine picture, turned it on, and aimed it at the canvas.
"Ok, where do you want the birds?" he asked.
Mom stood in the dark and eagerly penciled in the birds projected on her canvas.
For me, it was neat to see my mom and dad work together on something other than the care and feeding of kids and discussing creative problems rather than the issues of their adult children.
The first three or four paintings were hung on the walls of my mom and dad's house. As my mom completed other paintings, she gave them to my older siblings who had their own houses. There were scenes of the North Shore, water flowing over rocks, butterflies, and daisies. She also took another class in abstract painting, but she didn't care for that style very much.
Mom painted for only a very short time, probably about ten years, and then she stopped. She had started working on a huge sunset picture and it was taking forever just to put down the white base layer on the canvass. She never finished that one; it sat in the basement leaning against the moldy wall behind the ping pong table. I'm not sure why she stopped; maybe she got frustrated; maybe she got tired of it. Or maybe that particular season of her life had ended, and she finished what she needed to do; shared these special works so that we could remember her fondly.
When my mom passed away several years ago, I realized I was one of the only people in the family who didn't have one of her paintings on my wall. (Again, I was young when she had her painting phase, so I didn't have a house to put it in at the time.) My favorite one, the Autumn Scene Drive, was still hanging at the old house, so I asked my dad for it. It goes very well with my living room decor - reds and oranges, light wood and gold accents. I remember this one the most because it reminds me of Maiden Rock near Red Wing. (I also remembered how tedious it seemed as I watched her paint every single leaf!) I also liked the close up and distant perspectives. It just amazed me how she was able to capture that from the original photo. On the back of the painting I found a birthday card that my mom had used for the picture. It was from my grandma to my brother (dated 1973).
Also in my house I have one of Mom's abstract pictures. She painted the picture of the smoke swirling up from an extinguished match (which as you can see, is a neat picture).
Since it was an abstract class, the teacher suggested that she add the curved black slices in the picture. Needless to say, this was not my mom's favorite painting.
Personally, I really like certain forms of abstract art, but I also didn't really like the black slices. I'm not a painter, but I decided to add my own creativity to the work. I had some glitter paint which softened up the black portions. I also glued on some colored embroidery threads to make it look more three-dimensional. It's still a work in progress, but it's something of which I can say, "Mom and I did this one together."
Also in this series:
Beautiful!
Gorgeous work by your mom, Carol. 🌷