Painted around 1993 as I was on the verge of becoming a mother myself, I began to reflect on my feelings about and the relationship with my own mother who had died 8 years earlier. As I sorted through a wide range of emotions and saw the conflicts on so many levels, I realized that I was trying to make a decision, a judgement in black and white about who she was. Was she a Saint, or was she a sinner? all good or all bad? I painted this from my memory of her with her white hair and paisley housecoat, her cigarette, her yellowed fingers and wrinkled skin. I think I even captured the pain in her eyes. Having been a Mom now for 14 1/2 years, I have finally grown up and realized, she was just a person, like me, doing the best she knew how.
Painted around 1993 as I was on the verge of becoming a mother myself, I began to reflect on my feelings about and the relationship with my own mother who had died 8 years earlier. As I sorted through a wide range of emotions and saw the conflicts on so many levels, I realized that I was trying to make a decision, a judgement in black and white about who she was. Was she a Saint, or was she a sinner? all good or all bad? I painted this from my memory of her with her white hair and paisley housecoat, her cigarette, her yellowed fingers and wrinkled skin. I think I even captured the pain in her eyes. Having been a Mom now for 14 1/2 years, I have finally grown up and realized, she was just a person, like me, doing the best she knew how.
