Things have been terribly quiet here on my blog lately, but that’s not to say that work has been quiet as well.  In fact I’ve been quite busy, and it’s been wonderful!  The past few months have been spent working on a few illustrations for children’s magazines, which I will be able to share with you closer to their publication dates in June and October.

Grandma Sylvia, 2010

One project that I recently finished and am able to share is the above painting that I created for my Grandmother.   She lived with my family from when I was two to when I was fifteen, and she had a big hand in my childhood and my upbringing.  She is the mother of my father and yesterday, together with my uncle’s family, we celebrated her 92nd birthday.  It was a wonderful day where we all cooked dinner together, and shared stories of Sylvia’s life and family over good food and good drinks – and  boy does she have some stories!  This is a lady who lived in Afghanistan for five years when my dad was in college.  She traveled all over the world, from India to Iran to Guatemala, collecting goods for an imports store that she ran, all while raising three kids – two of which were rambunctious boys who were very into mischief making (speaking of great stories, my Dad and Uncle have them… but those are for a different post).  She was a “Badger Beauty” as a college student in Green Bay Wisconsin, and when asked what her secret to reaching 92 years is, she responded “milk,” like a true Wisconsin girl.  At 92 she is incredibly sweet, and has a serenity to her that is hard to find in others her age – to me, my Grandma is the epitome of graceful aging, and the picture of a life well lived.

A few months ago she requested a painting of herself gazing at the moon and a star from her bed, and the completed piece was my gift to her for her birthday yesterday – in the interim time, I got to spend the weeks painting this thinking of my Grandmother’s life, and remembering the memories we have shared.  In that way, although I don’t think she knows it, her request for a painting was a gift to me.

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