Friday 14 December 2012

And then there were flowers

My grandma (mother of my mother) was born in 1900 and died more than 90 years later. She raised her five children more or less alone and was an independent and strong woman. She got furious about politics sometimes when she got older, fantasizing about shooting them all with a laser gun. I liked her.

Aunt Lori, grandma Charlotte, and my mother (also called Charlotte)

She was a gifted painter (I would say) but apparently she only painted flowers.

When I emptied my parents' house after they had died, there were a number of flower paintings hanging on the wall, and several jugs, jars, trays, boxes and such everywhere over the house, all covered with flowers. I don't want to keep it all (not sure who would want to have this stuff) but I took it home with me, and took photographs (or scans) of everything. Then I uploaded them all to flickr, a popular photo community that has lots of groups, some of them about flower painting. My grandma's work will get a little bit of digital immortality.

Here are some of her pictures. Go to flickr if you want to see them all.








(This is the writing on the back side of one of the postcard sized paintings, from the 1960s like most of her work. Funny how the writing style has changed - I have a hard time deciphering this)