Remembering / Recollecting

Remembering / Recollecting 

30" x 40" 

I have sold a few paintings recently, this being one of them. Of all the paintings I made last year, this one has something inexplicably different about it. It was the first painting I have ever felt nervous to sell~ like I might be selling a part of my heart... but when the moment came for me to let it go, it felt just right.

{edited to add: My grandmother was on my mind a lot when I painted this painting last summer. She recently passed away, leaving the stories of her life imprinted on me. Most of the stories are snippets, fragments, that leave you aching for more. Abandonment at two-years-old when her mother died, Befriending the chief of a neighboring Indian Reservation as an 8-year-old, brain surgery and subsequent morphine addiction,  Hearing restored in her ear at a revival, years of being a librarian, a collector... meeting my grandfather when he shot a spitball at her at the soda fountain... 
But this painting isn't about my grandmother specifically. It is about love, and loss. And deeply allowing grief to sit on your shoulder so you can let go what you need to. }