My mother. This piece is from a photo my dad captured during a photography class my parents took together. I think she was 25 at the time, which would have made me 6. This image perfectly captures my mom in her youth, but says little about who she would become. Beauty was always paramount. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her without makeup and, though she was never necessarily into fashion, she’s always been concerned with what she wears and how she looks. She invites the attention and absorbs it. 

Yet my mother is tough. As an artist she got her start painting 8x8 foot backdrops for school dances while she was still a young mom. This prepared her to begin a long career as a Mardi Gras float artist — she claims to be the first female float artist to work for Blaine Kerne’s famous company. Regardless, she was in very exclusive company as one of only a few float artists in the city, and it was extremely difficult work. The studio was a series of warehouses with no AC, no heat, it was dirty and labor intensive. This was man’s work in which she faced skepticism and overcame it. 

She became an independent contractor, painting and designing floats across the region while taking on another immense challenge as a billboard artist. Her canvases were now 14 feet tall and 48 feet wide, working alone in a warehouse with a hydraulic lift and a projector. She created innumerable “pictorials” of people, cars & trucks, Rolex watches. She cut long, perfect lines on huge hand-painted letters. I worked with her for a summer, starting at 5am every morning to avoid some of the afternoon heat, and can attest that this was hard, hard work. 

My mother taught me to paint a long, straight line and this piece is full of them. I love the shapes that define the nose, the zigzags and arches of the eyes, and the waves of the shadows defining her hair and arm in a golden yellow ochre. That pink works naturally as lips yet perfectly pops as a background. And somehow, the white line that borders her face makes the whole piece feel electric.

This is a tough woman who deserves a beautiful portrait.