Paper Roses

Over the years I've inherited many things from family and friends that I treasure.  My Grandpa's metal chair from the family Pasta Sunday table in Ohio now sits in our Texas kitchen.  Before I moved, my 93 year old friend Marge gave me a special Ladderback chair that is now my studio seating. Other items have their place on shelves and the attachment is to their memories.  It should come as no surprise that I'm especially sentimental, keeping handwritten grocery lists and scraps of wallpaper from old homes.

These paintings in progress are an exploration of memory, attachment and absence.  The subject matter is linked to my past work in graduate school, but the content is different.  While my other pieces with furniture were about the process of forgetting, these paintings are about preserving a memory.

Above is a detail of a petite collage from 2009.  The color, subject matter and content inspired these large works.  It is one of my favorite 'sweet-tart' collages from that series, and one of the few I never wanted to sell.  It hangs on my bulletin board next to another tiny collage about falling in love with the sea (I was listening to a lot of the Looking Glass).

This morning was spent sketching rose patterned wallpaper for a diptych painting, 24" x 36" acrylic on canvas.  The drawing reminds me of Miss Threadgoode's room in Fried Green Tomatoes.  One of my favorite scenes is when Kathy Bates walks into her room to find the nurse taking down all the cutout paper roses from the walls.  She took the papers back and began to stick them in place again, telling her these were someone's memories and they couldn't be taken away...