New Friend

"New Friend" 11x14 Oil on linen panel

We took “Mom” on our trip to Canada stayed with my cousin Bill and his wife Marnie at their home right near Desert Lake Resort in Canada, a beautiful camping resort that they founded. It was great to have some time to get to know them better. By this time, everyone was just casually speaking of the chair as “Mom” We would say "be careful when you back up so you don’t run over Mom”. On this particular day, we were going on a boat ride through the 1000 Islands and we could not take the chair there. So I chose a spot for Mom high on a hill overlooking a view through the trees around a small lake that connected to Desert Lake. There was another chair already there, a hand made Adirondack chair of strong dark brown boards. As I painted this piece, I became taken with how different the chairs looked, one hand made, one mass produced; one bright pink and one dark brown. I realized I was thinking of them as male and female chairs. Well, how appropriate! Mom would have loved sitting there with a new found handsome man. She was quite a flirt.  My sister told of a doctor, after seeing Mom in her last year, saying incredulously, “she was flirting with me!” My sister said. “Yup. That’s Mom.”

Bill and Marnie