Beverly Had a Doll

Retrospective: Beverly Had a Doll (Oil on Gessoed Board)

Years ago, Grandma asked me to paint this picture of her, taken early in the 1930’s when she was about four.  Grandma wanted to give the requested painting as a gift to her husband.

**It occurs to me, as I write this, that I don’t “paint pictures”, where “picture” means photo.  I might use a photo for inspiration for an oil painting (or paint from a photo), but I don’t paint oil reproductions of photos.  Perhaps because I don’t have the skills to paint super realistically, but probably more because I don’t want to.  I delight in artistic license.  Abstractions.  The freedom to interpret/distort meaningfully. ** 

This aforementioned husband was not my Grandpa, but a stranger my Grandma had eloped with shortly after Grandpa died (she was in her early 70’s at the time… proof that drama and adventure have lifetime warranties).  Given her erratic behavior and some of the disconcerting oddities she was sometimes wont to say (such as announcing one day that actually, she’d never loved Grandpa), I decided to assume her request was a trifling whim; one that she would forget in a month or two.   A request I could ignore without guilt (actually, she probably forgot almost instantly, but I wouldn’t know that for a long time, having no clue yet that my grandmother was experiencing gradual onset dementia).

The truth was, I felt a little cranky with Grandma.  Who I’d been devoted to all my life.

I was, however, very intrigued by the photo.  I kept it, and mused over it whenever I happened to run across it.  I thought about painting from it,  eventually…

And then, I began to see that little girl Grandma looked a lot like my sister Leah’s daughter at the same age.  Spunky, feisty, adorable little Shae (she’s sixteen now; still feisty and adorable).   I can’t even begin to describe Shae; only that to me, she is precious.  Vulnerable despite all her spunk and chutzpah (particularly when she was four).  And though I didn’t understand yet that my grandmother’s sanity was declining, it suddenly became easy to be soft with her again.  To let the painful things she said and did just roll off my shoulders.  There is something about seeing people that way, how they were as children?   Innocent, Vulnerable?  That makes it easy to be generous with them.

(Shae then, Sarie now)

By the time Mara Lee’s daughter Sarie was born, I had a better grip on what my grandma was going through. What she’d been through.  Sarie also reflects little girl Grandma’s spunk, adorability, vulnerability.  Sarie also is precious to me.  And I was ready to paint Beverly Had a Doll.

I wanted the painting to be somewhat monochromatic.  Whites and golds appealed to me at the time, so that is what I painted with.  I kind of regret my color choice now; white and gold look more privileged than Grandma’s impoverished circumstances would have been, and I’m kind of proud of her scrappy roots.  But.  She did have a doll.