Love Made Visible

Family Portraits from new and old photographs

create lasting works of art of your treasured memories.

(Click on the art images to see them in greater detail.)

	A picture paints a thousand words and the biographical portraits I create are layered with symbolism. In this portrait of the long and productive marriage of my parents I have placed a photo of the extended family including sixteen grandchildren behind the couple and layerd paper over it untill it is barely visible.They rise out of a landscape which includes water symbolizing the ocean of life which they navigated together. The words "Fear not for I am with thee" at the center of the piece not only refers to God's presence in their relationship but how they have been there for one another.
	I was mesmerized by the similarities in these two photographs taken close to 80 years apart. The adult in each seems to ask the child to look at the camera in an intimate moment of bonding and loving protection. The child in the first is now the man in the second. The child in the second will one day be the adult. To me it expresses the evolution that time's constant marching eventually brings to all. Yet I see the paradox ; there is only one flowing moment in which we live. I used these two moments to represent the well lived life of my father, who though he lost his mother at an early age spoke about her to us often with deep affection.
	The old photograph caught my attention as it was taken of the couple without their knowing. They are caught in an unguarded moment on one of their first dates, before they were married and went on to spend their lives together. I wondered if they had any idea what lay ahead, what were their dreams and if those dreams were fulfilled. I used a silhouette of them in the present as I feel we are all still those young people we were at some level. Notice the man's silhouette surrounds the woman and vice versa symbolizing how they have affected each others personalities over the years.
	A collage portrait of a woman who is a mother, a life long teacher of languages and who holds rational thought and fairness in high regard. She has a love of books and learning as well as a deep interset in her ancestry and family. She balances her own family with her family of origin and her sword declares that the light heart lives longest.
	A portrait of an artist who is so full of impressions and responses to her world that she must express them. The swallows seem to fly out from her heart into the world symbolizing her paintings going out to have lives of their own. She is painted as a romantic celtic figure to express her deep emotional nature and love of the earth. I used some of her paintings in the collage as well as photos and feathers.