Big Sunflowers

Big Sunflowers

Oil on canvas, 36x48

sold

If my mother — Mary Ann Hook Cooper — were alive, Wednesday would have been her 85th birthday.

She’s been gone for six years now, but she’s with me, every day, every minute. She’s in the blood that runs through me. She’s in my long upper lip and my bad right foot. She’s in my taste for peanut butter, and she’s in my outlook and my optimism. My mother is in my love of color, my sense of adventure and my delight in laughter.

And she’s in my paintings. She is in the courage that it takes to start, and the tenacity it takes to keep going when – inevitably, in every painting – it looks like disaster is looming. 

She is in my love of the landscape and the creatures in it, in my love of color and movement and sense and sensation.

She is at my heart and in my soul, and she is in the heart and the soul of every painting I make.

On your birthday, Mom, I missed you as I miss you every day. And today, more than anything, I celebrate you, and the beautiful, strong life you lived and shared with me.

***

This painting (one my mother would have loved) is really pretty spectacular - even more in person than in the photo! 

If you want to see it in person, come to the show this weekend in Leesburg, VA. It's from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday. I am on South King Street, in Booth 37. Leesburg is apparently a beautiful, historic village in a gorgeous part of Virginia. Y'all.