Crop Till You Drop!

This time the challenge was actually the challenge of having time to do a challenge piece so Chris and I decided to take a snippet from a much larger painting and create an image from that. We discovered that both our paintings reminded us of our Grandmothers so this ended up being a tribute to them as well.

A lot of Chris' work comes from memories of her grandmother's things as she explained to me " My grandparents built the house I grew up in -- my parents moved in with my grandfather after my grandmother died -- so there were lots of her things around when I was a young child. She loved her flower gardens and vases and pretty tablecloths. Even though the elements in my painting never belonged to my grandmother, they remind me of her."

I received a lot of positive feedback on the hair in "Xochitl" (pronounced So-Shee-tl which means Queen of Flowers) but I was really more interested in painting the embroidery because not only was it challenging, but it brought me back to days of watching my grandma creating magical flowers with her needles and colorful threads. I could go on and on about Little Shell and all the magic she did, from healing babies to her famous tamales, but I'll save that for future paintings.

"Xochitl" by Me

"Red Anemone" by Chris Beck

The most courageous person I know

Imagine the courage it takes to send your 5 year old to a new country to live with people you've never met, having faith that they would be safe and taken care of with the promise of getting medical attention needed. I remember well the night my mom told me what was going to happen and feeling safe in her strength and belief that everything would be fine and in her wisdom and connection with God, it did turn out just fine and hopefully so did I.

This is a very special mothers day thank you to my mom Rosy who saw into the future.