Chapter 12: early autumn 2005
Mom continued painting leaves into the fall. They were easy to bring into the class at Rose Villa and take off with, with her imaginative and stimulating backgrounds (14a):
She actually pushed her compositional ideas a little further. The effect is to inundate us with color (14b):
Another example is the one below (14c). She called it another "Fantasie Japonica," although I see nothing Japanese in this monstrous plant:
Later in the month she backed off these extremes and contented herself with seasonal images. She included pears, a typical autumn fruit, with her leaves; they appear to be rustling across the page (14d).
She did another version of this same idea as a Halloween card. Once it was done, my brother Steve e-mailed it out to family just in time. I remember being with her that class. She wanted something besides leaves. So I trudged over to the Treasure House, just across the hall actually, and brought some little things they had—gourds, mostly. She picked out a little plastic Jack O’Lantern to put in her painting (14e). She wanted the painting to signify Holloween. (Remember, she had had a couple of stroke. She had aphasia, difficulty in verbal communication. It was hard for her to say the right words, especially about something she was planning, an idea in her head like art for Holloweeen.)
The Rose Villa Holloween Party came a few days later. The staff and some of the residents had on costumes, and there were prizes for the best one. Mom’s contribution was to sketch the people around her. One was Susan Lehr, in marketing (14f).
Another was resident Ruth Mulkey (14g).
A third was "Billie" McMurkey (14h). Mom amazed us in never forgetting someone’s name, even at the end.
And of course she had to do me (Slide 14i). I should add that the sketches don’t look all that much like the people they are of. They are more caricatures than portraits; Mom called them “cartoons.”
All was not totally fun that Holloween, however. Mom would start doing something in fun and then scare herself out of her wits. In her class at the Milwaukie Senior Center, she drew her idea of a scary monster. But it scared her so much that she ripped it up and threw it in the trash. She told me about it, and I immediately wanted to see it for myself. We fished around in the trash, got some tape, and taped him back together (14j). We both had a good laugh after that.
Another time, I took Mom to the other side of the Willamette, Lake Oswego, to do some sketching. It was a warm October afternoon, and she had a nice time, sitting on a bench overlooking the lake. On the way back, I wanted to look at a small park and boat landing directly opposite Rose Villa. We had seen it often when I took Mom down to the river close to her apartment, at River Villa Park. Mom didn’t think it was a good idea. I said it would only take a minute. We stopped, and I got out of the car to look more closely. Suddenly the sprinkler in the lawn started up, getting me a little wet. Mom was terrified. We couldn’t get back soon enough. She explained that the house next door was haunted. She’d looked at it closely; nobody ever came there, it was really spooky. She did some eerie drawings of houses on the other side of the river. The first one below (14k) has "haunted house" and "10/18/05" written on the back (14k). We never went to that area again!
She actually pushed her compositional ideas a little further. The effect is to inundate us with color (14b):
Another example is the one below (14c). She called it another "Fantasie Japonica," although I see nothing Japanese in this monstrous plant:
Later in the month she backed off these extremes and contented herself with seasonal images. She included pears, a typical autumn fruit, with her leaves; they appear to be rustling across the page (14d).
She did another version of this same idea as a Halloween card. Once it was done, my brother Steve e-mailed it out to family just in time. I remember being with her that class. She wanted something besides leaves. So I trudged over to the Treasure House, just across the hall actually, and brought some little things they had—gourds, mostly. She picked out a little plastic Jack O’Lantern to put in her painting (14e). She wanted the painting to signify Holloween. (Remember, she had had a couple of stroke. She had aphasia, difficulty in verbal communication. It was hard for her to say the right words, especially about something she was planning, an idea in her head like art for Holloweeen.)
The Rose Villa Holloween Party came a few days later. The staff and some of the residents had on costumes, and there were prizes for the best one. Mom’s contribution was to sketch the people around her. One was Susan Lehr, in marketing (14f).
Another was resident Ruth Mulkey (14g).
A third was "Billie" McMurkey (14h). Mom amazed us in never forgetting someone’s name, even at the end.
And of course she had to do me (Slide 14i). I should add that the sketches don’t look all that much like the people they are of. They are more caricatures than portraits; Mom called them “cartoons.”
All was not totally fun that Holloween, however. Mom would start doing something in fun and then scare herself out of her wits. In her class at the Milwaukie Senior Center, she drew her idea of a scary monster. But it scared her so much that she ripped it up and threw it in the trash. She told me about it, and I immediately wanted to see it for myself. We fished around in the trash, got some tape, and taped him back together (14j). We both had a good laugh after that.
Another time, I took Mom to the other side of the Willamette, Lake Oswego, to do some sketching. It was a warm October afternoon, and she had a nice time, sitting on a bench overlooking the lake. On the way back, I wanted to look at a small park and boat landing directly opposite Rose Villa. We had seen it often when I took Mom down to the river close to her apartment, at River Villa Park. Mom didn’t think it was a good idea. I said it would only take a minute. We stopped, and I got out of the car to look more closely. Suddenly the sprinkler in the lawn started up, getting me a little wet. Mom was terrified. We couldn’t get back soon enough. She explained that the house next door was haunted. She’d looked at it closely; nobody ever came there, it was really spooky. She did some eerie drawings of houses on the other side of the river. The first one below (14k) has "haunted house" and "10/18/05" written on the back (14k). We never went to that area again!
posted by Michael S Howard at 11:08 AM
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