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I was reminded of the duet done through the magic of modern technology between Natalie Cole & her wonderful father Nat King Cole long after he had passed & before he ever got to see her success in the music world.

 

My grandfather never finished this painting and my mother gave it to me after his death in the hopes I could finish it one day.  It hung like that in my home for many years.  So what do you get someone for Christmas who truly has everything she wants, who has down-sized to a smaller place in her retirement years with her husband and who has minimalist taste?  You do the thing she asked all those years ago & hopefully she can find room on her already full walls decked with my grandfather's & my paintings.  I have my daughter to thank for reminding me.

 

 

My goal was to preserve as much as possible of Opa's work on this painting & finishing that which clearly was not.........the sunflowers.  I looked for the photographs I had taken of my garden in the past and researched the kinds of flowers he had in this painting. It was lovely to have that communion with my grandfather, to wonder what he had planned for this work, to wonder if he would be pleased with what I decided to do to it, to try to work in harmony with what I could only guess were his ideas for it.  But I have an advantage many do not: He was my teacher and I grew up surrounded by his paintings and never tired of watching him work at his easel.  All that did assist me as I prayed the Lord would help me remember what was necessary to finish this painting as Opa would have. 

 

As I look at the result & am so happy with the opportunity to work again with my grandfather, I realize that it is okay that my personality & way of painting has come out in this work as well.  Even knowing him as well as we all did in our family, it was really impossible, for me at least, to reproduce only his style of painting.  Opa would push me to study, explore & create.  I truly felt the need to go beyond what he taught me & take this painting on as my own.  Did I read somewhere that the sign of a good teacher is that his student moves beyond the instruction?  So as it turns out, this painting is truly a blend of two artists' abilities & their desires to interpret the beauty they saw & see around them.  Thank you Opa.