Poetry and art

When I was attracted to doing the earlier digital painting based on a photo of my granddaughter and myself that hadn't quite come out, I kept thinking maybe I should try an oil painting using the same general subject but with the freedom an oil would give me to slant it slightly differently. Part of me felt like no, I should not do it. It's too personal. It won't work out. Part of me just had to try.

The pose my granddaughter chose for the photo was a gift to the painting as she's like a flower opening. I could not have thought of such a thing if I'd planned it.

These two females are at the opposite ends of their lives. I didn't know what to title the oil and still don't but when I remembered the following bit of poetry I had wanted to use someday. I knew it belonged with this painting.

The grandmother has had her barefoot days or maybe still is having them but less than what was. The girl is at the beginning of so much. It seemed logical that the grandmother would be looking in the distance, remembering, while the girl is looking toward the future. The oil is 14" x 18"

"I was born to catch dragons in their dens and pick flowers, to tell tales and laugh away the morning, to drift and dream like a lazy stream and walk barefoot across sunshine days."

James J. Kavanaugh
Sunshine Days and Foggy Nights