Grandmother Higgins

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.