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Grandmother Higgins30" x 40", oil on canvas Painted from life in Cincinnati. Started in 1985 and revised in 1990. Grandmother was born in the Oklahoma Territory in 1905. She had three children one of which was Tom's mother.
Grandmother was started in 1987 or so. Grandmother was
staying at the Lohre Family home in Park Hills, Kentucky and Tom was visiting
from New York City. The painting is on a prestreched canvas indicative of the
spontaneous start. The canvas lay uncompleted for more than ten years and
finally taken up again on April 14th, 1999. Tom was to begin painting Thomas
More and used the canvas as a way of getting started on the rather difficult
painting he would be working on for the next month and a half. Over the years
Tom added to the initial photographs he had taken of his grandmother in the
same pose. In the beginning Tom started painting with heavy paint. The initial
painting was done in one or two days and left it unfinished. Now, the final
painting will be smooth surface. The previous painting was covered with a tint
and then the modeling was added enhancing the form and color. It was a
challenge to meld the large blobs of paint into a usable form.
Grandmother was 94 on January 1st 1999 and currently living
with her son in Atlanta. It will be appropriate to finish her painting while
she is still alive although she can no longer sit for her portrait because the
smell of the oil paint irritated her senses.
The background in this painting will be one tint. It will be
the first time Tom has painted a solid background in a portrait for a long
time. The previous one being a painting
Check out the Lohre/Moore Family Tree. |
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