Theme: Love and Loss

Unconditional Love is when we hold another's heart gently in our cupped hands.

Grief is learning to surrender while holding tightly to that which can never slip through our fingers.

-JMH 2012

Love and Loss is a theme that has played an occasional role in my work. The ride of grief is one I've been on more times than I like to count. I am fascinated by it's roller coaster ride and the way it forces you to surrender all control of the process. I am enrolled and loving artist Kelly Rae Roberts and award winning entrepreneur Beth Nicholls 's Hello Soul Hello Business class for the next nine weeks. It has me brainstorming ways to combine my interest in walking with  families in the throes of grief and my commission work. I was up late last night with a business idea I am cooking up along these lines. 

It got me reviewing the theme of grief and loss that has occasionally shown up in my work. I share a few with you here: 

"Tenby" 2010
12"x12" acrylic, and mixed media on brown paper on wood panel.

 Tenby is a small lovely village on the coast of South Wales. It is a place that holds great sentimental value to me. In many ways, I feel I left a part of my heart there along with a friendship with a family that is no longer in my life. They were at one time the center of my heart. The memories of time spent in their world is still a source of some of  the most joy-filled moments of my life. Grieving this loss has been a long and complicated process. This piece lives in my bedroom with some grief objects placed around it. It is a source of strength and comfort and I have not been able to offer it for sale...yet. I will know when the time is right.

This is a photo taken back in about 2006 at a group show I was a part of at the Worcester Art Museum School. I was painting a series of works of ark images. The ark (not so much of the Noah variety) is an image that played a poignant role in my late mother's struggle to let go of her life while in the final stages of a brain tumor in 1996. To simplify the story is difficult but I will try: She was having a difficult day and was angry at God. She asked me why God wouldn't let her die. I suggested that it was because she was worried about leaving us (my sister, brother, father and her grand children) and that she should see her life as her ark. She spent her whole life building her ark with wonderful memories, faith and hard won strength. I told her that she had helped all of us begin to build our own arks and that it was time for her to trust that we would be safe with the guidance she had given us. She needed to push her ark away from the shore with all those memories and faith to comfort her. The next day she slipped into a coma and we never heard her voice again.

The piece ("Memory Leads You Home") I am standing next to in this photo is very large: 5'x5' (you can't see the whole thing). It was a piece I did in about three straight days in the time after my father died . I came home from the funeral in New Jersey and stayed up for several days finishing it. It is a memorial piece to my mother, brother Jeff who was killed in a car accident in 1976 and my father who lost his battle with Alzheimer's in 2006. It has symbolism for all three of them. It has vintage maps for my father who was a civil engineer, houses for my brother who was studying to be an architect and the ark for my mom. Many more hidden quotes and significant colors and dates were woven in as well. This piece sold at a alumni show at my Alma mater, Skidmore College  where I did my undergraduate degree in Studio Art. When the friend who bought it heard about it's significance he questioned my wanting to give it up. I felt strongly that it belonged out in the world not collecting dust in my studio and yes, I was ready to release it.

side view of "Love and Sorrow"
24"x 24x 2"
acrylic and mixed media on canvas
2007 

"Love and Sorrow" hangs above our bed. It is an homage to the very close friendship my mother shared with her best friend, my "Aunt Joan". It is a piece filled with symbols of their shared memories and includes a quote about the pain of losing a dear friend. Aunt Joan is battling the cruel progress of Alzheimer's Disease and does not always remember my mother anymore. In the years after my mother's death she and I would allow ourselves to indulge in hours of phone conversations about my mother and how much we missed her. I showed her this piece once and she cried and had few words...I understood every one of them.