This series is painted from bits and pieces of my childhood memory. I simply allowed the images to emerge without much regard to realism or any sort of accuracy at all. I wanted them to feel childlike. So far, the family has recognized each scene. My sister has these first pieces of this collection.
I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. We had one traffic light that actually turned red, yellow and green, and we had two "blinker" lights in town. There were 90 students in my graduating class, and the local grocery store had "horse hitches" for the Amish buggies. I say all of that just to make you realize just how small this darling little town was.
My grandmother lived across the street from us. She had been blind since the age of 19 as a result of typhoid fever. I don't remember grandpa as he passed away when I was only a year or two old. My cousins all lived within two blocks of our home. We played outdoors until the street lights came on. These paintings center around my grandmother. At least for now anyway. I have many more images in my head that revolve around other family members, but these are the beginning of what I hope to be many more. They are painted with my family in mind, and our descendants. They are to tell the story of our time.
This is the first painting in the series. All of the paintings are relatively small (14 x 18) and they are oil on canvas. The first painting depicts grandma and I standing on her furnace grate. It was a gravity furnace and the air just drifted up through that giant hole in her floor. All of us loved to stand on it and let the heat drift up our nightgowns. When the heat stopped, the nightgown would float down against your legs and it would almost burn. You couldn't stand on it in your bare feet. It was a good place to stand and talk. Grandma kept a small bench between the grate and the wall. Cuddles, her dog would lie under it. The light fixture is inaccurate. It wasn't there at all. I just thought there should be one there. The placement of the grate, bench and dog are not accurate either. None of that mattered. When my sister saw it, it was all familiar. The painting of the cat staring down the fishbowl, the handmade rugs, the spare room with the hide-a-bed were all there. I remember the "heat shiver" as my body contracted from the pleasure of that surge of heat. I remember her voice, the smell of her home, the sound of that grate ticking with the heat and that dog that always had a quiet growl every time you got near her. I remember thinking that "Cuddles" was NOT the right name for that dog.
The second painting in the series seems to be a family favorite. It is how we all remember Grandma. She would sit in her chair with that ashtray as big as a dinner plate held under her cigarette as she smoked. As a child I would often admire how long that ash could get on her cigarette before it would fall off into the ash tray. She subscribed to "talking books" for the blind. We would help her pick her books from a list she would get in the mail. She liked Gothic Novels. Few people had air conditioners in those days. On hot summer nights, I could hear her talking books through the open window of my bedroom across the street. It was a comforting sound. It was easy to sleep when you knew someone else was up keeping watch.
My cousins and I had many play days and sleepovers at grandmas. This particular memory is of me and my cousin, Brenda. We would sit at her kitchen table and play with paper dolls. Brenda had a lot of them, and she kept them quite nice. I remember the green door that led to the back porch and the red tile halfway up the walls. I couldn't remember the pattern of the wallpaper. I only remember that it was fruit, roosters or frying pans. So I chose to be a bit obscure about the pattern. She had curtains on her lower cabinets instead of doors. I remember the sun coming in that window next to the table, I remember that she drank instant coffee and used hot tap water to make it. She also made rugs and lots of them. She used scrap bias tape from the Talon Zipper company. She had boxes of small rolls of the stuff in her attic. We were sometimes given the task of fetching specific colors for her. She made red, white and blue ones for the fourth of July. (My memories are as random and fragmented as my writing!)
By the time I had finished this third painting, I realized I wanted to have the dog Cuddles, and her rugs, in each painting that centered around her.
Right now I am still fussing with a fourth painting depicting a scene with my Grandma. I have set it aside until I can open the windows of my home to fresh air to clear out the turpentine. I have a few more in my head that I hope to make a summer project. Keep watch!
For those of you that would like to paint, I would encourage you to paint your life. Paint your memories. Let them emerge in any color that suits you. For me, yellow is the color of my memories. It is a warm, friendly color and I cannot remember the actual color of things. Let the rooms be small or large, the people be fat or skinny. Just paint it how you think it! Surprisingly, it works.
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