Weekly Photo Challenge: Work of Art My Grandmother is an Artist

My grandmother is an artist.

Over the years, her oil paintings have adorned many walls. They were beautiful landscapes of colour and detail, shadows of mountains, life flowing in streams, and love delicately expressed onto canvass. I remember the smell of the paint, the blended hues she experimented with on her palette, her unfinished piece draped in cloth as it waited for more magic from her hands.

Ten years ago, at the age of 86, she painted what she thought was her last painting. Her eye sight was failing fast. Four years later, 90 years old and almost legally blind, she picked up the paint brush once more attempting a few final creations, including these two paintings for me and my husband.  She said she was not sure if she could paint again, but she hoped that we liked them.  What they may lack in her usual detail, they make up in visualization, strength and determination.

There are no words to explain how much they mean to me, so I won’t even try.

My grandmother is an artist.

She was also a dedicated wife to a Lutheran minister, devoted to her church and helping others, a most creative and resourceful person, and wonderful cook.

Today she is still a loving mother, grandmother and great grandmother. She lies quietly in a nursing home, unable to see or walk, and barely able to hear. In her mind, I believe she is still painting…memories of bright faces in the sunshine, places of long ago and visions of the light that waits patiently for her. I believe that someday she will paint with the angels.

My grandmother is an artist.

 

                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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