My great grandmother, who my grandpa had to leave behind when he ran from poverty and war, had one picture of her her whole life, and it sat on our mantle. It's been there since before I was born. You could tell from the lines on her face that she was powerful, she was courageous in the situation life presented her, a poor rice farmer without a partner, who had one child.
When I was a kid, I wondered what she sounded like, what she would do when she was delighted with my grandpa, or angered, how much sorrow she must have felt when he ran away in the middle of the night to make a name for himself, and how much pride and more melancholy she must have felt when she heard about everything he was doing for social politics and justice.
Now, two decades later, I wonder what she would have imagined I would turn out to be, what norms would shock them, and sometimes wish I could speak to her and her power. I wanted to extrapolate this thought a little further, and delve into the thoughts of painters and their paintings, of the life of a moment captured.
(This song is Changing Realities by Kai Engel, a brilliant composer.)
So, here's a little whimsical exploration of a painting who puts on a performance and dressing as passerby's stop, so momentarily, before moving on to the next.