Thursday, February 26, 2009

Mother: Saint or Sinner?

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.
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