My Beautiful Mother

I had a very productive day today. I spent a couple of hours in my studio which I have not done for months. I filled the space on the living room wall with a recent painting. That meant painting its edges and preparing it for hanging. And signing it. Then I prepped eleven small canvases for a series of bird paintings. My hope is to capture the energy and action of the jays without making realistic paintings of them. What I did today was to use Venetian red and gold gesso to create the gesture of the jays' movement and show the passage of dark and light. Each canvas was based on a particular photo of the jays taken within the last year. I am looking forward to doing a series of them.

I also photographed a bunch of old family photos so I could email them to the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Recently I received an email from them asking if I'd like to contribute to their site and museum of the Manhattan Project. They have lots of photos of my dad but none of my mother. (Actually they have some now as my brothers and I have already sent them some.) Today I went searching for more in the large scrapbooks I created with the family photos in 1990 when we first moved here. I couldn't find a job so I spent my free time putting all the photos in books. 

This photo is the one taken of my mother just before she and Dad got married. They married on June 7, 1941 when she was 28. She was such a beautiful woman. There is one of Dad too, taken at the same time by the same photographer. I'll save that for later.

The photo I was searching for is the extra for today. It is of Dad, Mom and me with Borrego Mac aka Reggy, their first Cocker Spaniel. The photo was taken in their house, Number 1 in "bathtub row" in Los Alamos. We all look so very young. I was eight weeks old when we moved to Los Alamos and around three when we left. It was an interesting time. I wish I actually remembered being there. I do have lots of memories of Mom's stories of the life there. She wrote a book called "The Atom and Eve" which talks of family life in Los Alamos and other adventures of being the wife of a physicist in Berkeley.