barbara

this is not my drawing. it belongs to barbara hirshfield who died in september. i stop at a lot of estate sales and there are often old art supplies and some artwork. but barbara's house had many piles of sketches, chipped paintings leaning against walls, and this one...i found with a few others in a mostly unused pad of paper that i ended up buying for a few cents.

 

barbara did not seem to be a great artist but she sketched and painted and was proud enough to frame her own work. i left the large portraits and the tiny paintings of cape cod. but this one - which reminded me of a drawing i did as a child (i promise to post it later) - got me thinking. i googled barbara hoping she might have been an art teacher or a senior center painting instructor at least. i found her obituary and there was not one mention of her as an artist. "she was an extremely family oriented person" it said, and a "long-time member of the local country club". i pause at this point of the story every time and my heart breaks. so i post this picture to let you all know about barbara because i don't want to think about what happened to all that artwork after the estate sale, those hours of enjoyment and effort, the sketching and experimenting, the tools and materials. i wonder if she feared wasting paper the same as i do.

and by the way, i stole this cat photo out of one of her frames. it's a gorgeous snapshot and i couldn't stand the idea of it forever disappearing. bad enough to lose the artwork...i'd hate to lose the inspiration.