Hello, Friends!
It has been several months since my last blog. I need to wish you a Happy 2021, which I do wishing all of you Health, Happiness and Prosperity!
You did not hear from me because I wanted to finish a painting, which took much longer than I expected.
This blog is dedicated to a very dear friend and second mother to me. Aunt (or "Tante" as my brother and I called her) Nieke's (short for Virginie, or Virginia) birthday is tomorrow and I want to remember her and all she meant to me. She was my mother's sorority friend from their time in college in Nijmegen (Netherlands) and the two stayed close for most of their life-time. (Both my mothers have passed on and I have even found a third mother in San Antonio. All three have deeply impacted my life.)
Tante Nieke played a role in my life from the time I was 2 and adopted me into her family when I was 9. I had been bullied in elementary school, we had met with the teacher who was not willing to do a thing, so my mother wanted me to change schools. Aunt Nieke had an answer, her son who was my age, went to a great school! So I switched schools and started eating lunch at Tante Nieke's house since there was no time for the long walk home.
Where did I get to see and experience kittens for the first time? You guessed it, at her house. When we moved in the South of France, who was the first to visit us? Aunt Nieke and her family.
Aunt Nieke with my nephew
When I returned to the Netherlands to study, I stayed at her house in a friendly room in the attic. She helped me feel at home in a country that had changed. When I moved to a dorm in Utrecht, she helped me find affordable furniture and anything else I needed. I spent almost all my holidays with my adopted family and I even went on a trip to Belgium with them.
She was at our wedding and after my marriage, she came to see me in California and knitted clothes for our sons. At so many visits to the Netherlands, I stayed with her; she helped me during my mother's illness. To me, she was always cheerful and full of good advice. She had many friends and came from a real big family. She had 9 brothers and sisters and cared for her parents for a long time. She was active, played tennis, rode her bike and did fitness exercises well into her 80's. Thanks to her and her family, I found my place in the Netherlands as a student and never felt really alone and lost. She and her home embodied the Dutch "gezelligheid" that cozy at home feeling to me. She wrote me almost as many letters as my mother and never forgot my birthday.
Happy Birthday, Tante Nieke! You did so much for me, I can never thank you enough!
Tochka, series Cats during Covid, oil, 10 x 10" (25x25cm)
Tochka is the first oil in the series. She loves boxes. The painting is a little darker.
My mother, Geraldine, oil, 24x24" (60x60cm)
This is the painting I wanted to be ready. When I look at it, I still see little things to change...
Most of it is set in the Dutch Indies, now Indonesia. Both portraits are of my mother. The house is inspired by the home she lived in before the war. The houseboat is inspired by the houseboat she lived on while studying singing; it was her teacher's home. The hills are covered by tea plantations and the material is traditional, local batik.
