Family History watercolors, Part One
"Thelma and the New Dress" I have a large collection of family photographs, some dating as far back as the 1870s. All of them are black-and-white, although a few are the brown-tone common to early tintypes. Many of the people in these photos are my mother's paternal grandfather and his siblings -- farmers who emigrated from England and settled in Canada. Later, when they arrived in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom in the years just before World War One, they lived and worked as farm managers. As a result, my maternal grandfather Fred, his sister Thelma, and their cousins, spent their early childhood in relaxed and healthy rural surroundings. My Aunt Thelma was quite photogenic. And despite the grainy, out-of-focus snapshots produced by early 20th-century cameras, images of Thelma are captivating. For quite some time, I've wanted to translate these photos into watercolor sketches. So I recently began to work on two paintings of my great aunt when she was a young...
