SIT WITH ME STAY WITH ME
My sister was 21 years older than I, my mentor and role model. I see so many of my own choices influenced by her, yet despite our difference in years and distance, we seemed to share a psyche. We also sat on the same branch, though on different twigs, of immune-system-related chronic diseases. I have watched her create a life, balancing beauty and pain, voracious living while cheating death. After a long battle, death the great equalizer took her body, and soul is with her Creator now.
I began this series of work to chronicle the time that we spent together in her last years. I now continue, working no longer from life, but from reference and memory. She was an interior designer, her work infused - and others' - environment with a quality-of-life through beauty. These paintings are my way that I’ll be able to have her sit with me, to have her stay with me.
2015, oil on panel, 5 x 7 in.