Age 8 or so. Me and my dad in Colorado ‘panning for gold’ at one of those tourist Gold Rush things. My mom snapped this photo. I had a small gold nugget that my dad bought me in the gift shop that I had forever.

3rd grade, so about 1966? Me standing in front of my house about to walk to school. My mom took the photo probably because she had just made me that new triangular scarf that we all wore then. I took it off halfway to school of course. Then one day, somehow a bird pooped on my head and I had to confess to my mom that I was not wearing the scarf which she then proclaimed that the SOLE PURPOSE of that scarf was to protect my hair from bird droppings. I look like a little babushka.

We all have those photographs of us. Where we’re just sitting there in a room doing seemingly nothing. Somebody took a snapshot. Why? No idea.  I’m sure it was my mother that took the picture. Maybe she saw the light coming in from the shears hanging in that window, the sunlight shining in. Or maybe she had just sewn that outfit I’m wearing and she was trying to get a picture of it which is probably the most likely explanation. What is weird is that I can remember that day when I was just sitting there…. I remember the fabric of the sofa and the crisp cotton of the top and the “peddle pushers” she had made me. The sofa was actually part of a sectional that my mother had separated . I have no recollection of the vase and flowers though.

Age 3. First time trying to master the hula hoop but all I could manage was just stepping through it. Little did I know how many hoops I would jump through in my life.

I’m still moving as if the hula hoop is spinning—though it’s already dropped to the ground. It’s that beautiful moment in childhood where trying feels like succeeding, and belief carries more weight than results.

In the photograph that inspired this painting, I’m about six or seven, holding a ball over my head like I’m about to shout “Catch!” I was looking at the person who took the photo, expecting them to be on the other end, ready. But they were taking the photo so how could they catch that ball? But now, in the painting, the person I’m looking at is you. The photographer has disappeared, and now you, the viewer, are the one I’m throwing it to. Maybe the ball is just a ball—or maybe it’s a stand-in for all the things we send out into the world with hope: a gesture, a story, a need, a truth. As a child, I believed someone would be there to catch it. I’m not sure they were.

But here you are. Catch!

Me about age 2, sitting in a high chair in a typical 1960s kitchen. Complete with the wall phone and a Nesco which was a fixture in my parents' home forever. Dozens of thanksgiving turkeys were cooked in that. I now have the Nesco, though not the cabinet They kept booze in that cabinet, which was funny because they barely drank. The same bottles of vermouth, bitters, and whiskey were in it for years for the twice a year weekend with friends where they played poker and drank Manhattans. I also inherited the highchair which I used for my own kids but no idea where it ended up.

This one is not of me but of my mom and my dad and uncle just hanging out at the bank of the Vermillion River in Danville Illinois before they had any kids. So about 1937? My dad and uncle had been swimming. My mom is sitting in a chair dressed in denim overalls, a plaid shirt, and little hiking boots. She was not raised on a farm and wasn’t a hiker, so I don’t know why she was dressed that way. I once asked her about it, but she couldn’t remember. Really didn’t even remember the day.

My aunt must have taken the photo since she is missing from the scene.

It’s one of those moments preserved in a photo, yet the memory fades over time—making it all the more precious. And I just love those little boots.

My sister, my parents, and my grandmother—caught in a fleeting snapshot nearly 90 years ago. In this painting, I wanted to depict not just their presence, but the feeling of their absence.