Grandpapa

Oil and stretched canvas. Grandpapa is a portrait of memory—of the way we sometimes remember the people we love not exactly as they were, but as they live inside us. My French-Canadian grandfather was a farmer and cheesemaker from Quebec. I don't remember him wearing a beret or playing the flute, but somehow this is how I see him: an old-world figure in the quiet landscape of my imagination, with a little melancholy and sweetness beneath it. I painted this when I was 18, during my early studies as an artist. I remember learning that even a seemingly flat wall could have shape and dimension simply through the placement of forms and values. The sleeping dog, the solitary figure, the doorway, and the quiet outdoor setting give the painting a sense of weight and tenderness. This painting has hung in my family home for more than three decades. It is one of those pieces that carries both the history of the person who painted it and the history of the people who lived alongside it. Grandpapa is, ultimately, a painting about love, memory, and the complicated tenderness of family.

Year: 1989

Dimensions: 20.0″ × 20.0″ × 1.0″