The story

Now here's the story that goes with this painting.

The picture is like most pictures from that time, not much expression from the subjects. The small canvas represents looking closer at it as does the writing. You have to look closer to read it. Many things upon closer inspection aren't what the seem. As with this.

These are my great grand parents. My ggma had a rough time before she met my ggpa. She was shuffled around between foster homes. Foster homes at that time weren't what they are today. They were basically work houses for children. The kind of life were my ggma used to wrap her feet in newspaper to work in the fields because she didn't have shoes. (until the day she died if she wasn't in bed she had her shoes on, and NEVER took them off). She didn't see any of her siblings once in those many years. It was a very lonely 9 years. But then she met my ggpa and life got better in so many ways. Even though they were raising their children through the depression, any given night of the week they had 11 or more extra people at there dinner table. They may not have been rich but they were more than willing to share what they had.

They were completely and totally in love and others were drawn to them. But then my ggpa died and without going into specifics life got incredibly difficult again without him. A beautiful story with heartache, bliss and heartbreak.

When I was little I couldn't say great grandma, so I called her "Grandma the Great" And it suck. Everyone called her that, even the ones she wasn't related to. She was such a sweet lady. I miss her a lot. It was nice to do this painting of them and revisit these feelings.