A Four-Generation Portrait

It's been over 4 years in the making, but I finally finished a major portrait I've been working on!

It's a four-generation portrait of mother-daughters:  L on the bottom left, Stacy of course in the center, her mother Lynne top left, and Lynne's mother Ann (Grandma Ann) on the right.  This was one of the very first paintings I foolishly attempted after starting classes, but I had very high expectations and quickly realized that I'd bitten off more than I was capable of chewing.  Knowing I was not yet up to the task, I shelved it to work on other things until I could get some other portraits under my belt.  About six to nine months ago I dusted it off (quite literally) and had another go at it.

The sad thing about the delayed timeline is that Grandma Ann passed away about six months after I started the painting (about a month before N was born) and never got to see it.  She did see the source picture I took it from and "ooh"-ed and "ahh"-ed over it mightily, but I sure wish she could have seen the finished painting.  She was a woman who followed the dictum that, if you can't say something nice about something, you dug in your heels and said something even nicer.  Flowery and sweet, Stacy and I affectionately called her the Queen of the Superlative.  Every meal was the best one she'd ever tasted; every flower was the most beautiful she had yet encountered - which for a woman in her nineties is saying something.  Her favorite syllable was "-est."  I have little doubt my artist ego would have been well stroked had Grandma Ann gotten to see her portrait.

Stacy and I have a favorite Grandma Ann memory:  We were down at her house in Sun City, California for Thanksgiving one year and Ann proudly displayed a new orchid she had received recently.  It was, of course, the most beautiful orchid she'd ever seen and she'd been watering it faithfully, and didn't you know, that very morning a new bud had opened up.  Stacy and I took one look at the orchid and looked at each other quizzically.   It was clearly a plastic orchid.  "Ann," said Joe, her pleasantly gruff former engineer husband, "It's FAKE!"

"Oh no, dear," insisted Grandma Ann.  "I'm sure it's real, come look."

Practical Joe and doe-eyed Ann spent the next several minutes examining and staking their claims on the floral taxonomy while the rest of us sat back and enjoyed the show, knowing we'd been blessed with another superlative Grandma Ann moment.

Joe, L, Lynne, Stacy & Ann