An afternoon sifting through old family photos can certainly be an emotional journey, with each subsequent snapshot triggering memories that haven't been touched for decades. This was a painting I'd given to a neighbor friend who had helped me move my children and my life to another state in 1984. The subject reminded that friend of his family's farm and equipment, and perhaps it hangs in their living room still. The painting has been long forgotten, and I hadn't remembered there was a snapshot taken of it until I found it in the box of family photos my mother left me. The photo is badly aged and degraded as you can see. But the darkening of it almost mimics the overshadowing fear and apprehension that tinted my view of the future around that time. It reminds me of how important it can be to reassure that lonely past self that I am so proud of her efforts to build a safe and loving life for herself and her children, and how strong she was. I am living the joyful and healthy future she could not see that her trajectory was shifting toward.
It was a bold move to stay with the limited color scheme, too... is that how it was originally or was there some blue in it? The result now does have a feeling of being focused on a task, like a farm project.
ReplyDeleteYes, there was more color to the painting, but as a painter, I was rather afraid of color, didn't understand it very well. I just mimicked what I saw in nature, I thought. I did lots of barns, forests and fields. When I scanned the photo, I was able to bring back some of the light into it with iPhoto editing, but couldn't roll back the darkness. It seems appropriate... like some of the old tin-types, the way they changed with time. Funny, I think this may have been one of the few paintings I did without hidden faces.
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