Week 148

My great-grandmother was a medicine woman. She worked with the Indians to learn botanical medicine and spent years helping others heal. I only knew her in the last years of her life. I remember her as a woman bound by incredible arthritic pain to her chair, but she was never without a smile so large and deep it cracked the sides of her soft, jowled cheeks. Her laugh was always ready, and her disfigured hands were always open. When she was young, she created a place where future generations could come to enjoy the healing effects of nature. She hand-planted cypress trees around the pond on her land, knowing she would not live to see them in their full glory. She planted wild irises along the water's edge in purple, pink, white, and yellow. She lived her whole life and beyond to create beauty and offer healing to others. These irises are the offspring of those, lovingly thinned from her oasis and given by my sweet Uncle Philippe to plant at my home. They have survived two apocalyptic winters and blossom with vigor each Easter. I look for them every time I gaze out over the creek, and there they are, anchored by love and fierceness in the clay and in my heart. We modified the original picture to be darker and moodier, allowing the brilliant irises to rise out of the murky darkness to show their determined beauty, wild and resilient, committed to continuing the legacy of offering beauty and healing in a new location.

Heirlooms

29 7/8 x 17 3/8 in | Oil on Panel