Or: Portrait of the artist as a young woman.  Upper left, I think I am four years old; upper right, twelve?; lower left, nineteen or twenty; lower right; twenty-three.

Some thoughts:

  • In three of these pictures I am uncharacteristically somber, and I am that way by design. The first two pictures were definitely, and the last one was probably, taken by my mother, who was always looking for portrait fodder, and she didn’t want a bunch of grinning people to paint.
  • When I was a little, it was A Thing that if you were out of school for illness you might be pressed into model service by mom. Other kids got to get a TV put in their room and watch game shows; I sat in what we called the ‘back room’ of the house where mom painted and sat for pictures or wore a hat while mom sketched, looking somber all the while.
  • Fun Fact: of all her ten grandchildren, mom, a gifted artist, has not painted one picture of my children. The other kids? Pictures all over the place. Her explanation? All the pictures of my kids are showing them smiling or laughing, and that’s not what she wants to do.
  • I think that the cheerful picture was snapped by my ex-brother-in-law, and was definitely taken at the apartment he shared with my sister in Flagstaff.
  • The last picture is notable in that it demonstrates that my natural hair color is not so far off from Sam’s violently red hair. I’ve been going gray for so long that I had forgotten what color it used to be. (You can tell that mom grabbed a camera and started posing me because a) I’m not looking at the camera and b) the book I’m sitting with is about breaking rules in watercolor.)

Bonus: that first black and white picture? Here’s what mom does after she takes a bunch of pictures and then starts doodling with a watercolor:

watercolor bess

I was a grown woman before I realized that people bought art to hang in their homes as decoration. I had just sort of assumed that mothers had babies and painted all the art in the house. Buy art that goes with your decorating? I thought that you decorated around your favorite pieces of art.

What the heck is she doing now?

© E. Stocking Evans 2016