Anne K. & John Moore Memorial Award - Oak Ridge Art Ctr. 2020 Open Exh.
22 x 23”
Watercolor on Saunders Waterford 200# Cold Press
Some paintings have a special place, an importance in an artist’s work that is one step beyond the others. They teach more, plumb deeper depths, and bare the reluctant heart. They make me vulnerable. Paintings like that are raw and open when I first start them. Sometimes they hurt. In the end, though, the painting and I find our way to the truth, and I grow in unforeseen ways. This was that sort of painting.
She reminded me of someone difficult when I first saw her, someone I’d never really thought of painting, but the hat…well the hat pulled me in. She said I could photograph and paint her, and she posed right there in the second-hand western wear shop. I laid out the painting right away, eager and dreading it all at once. And now I must thank her right here in public because when I was finished, I could finally see the love. In her, of course, and in the difficult person who died 23 years ago. And in myself. I owe her a lot.
