Dolls
These paintings are based on paper doll clothes I made as a child, garments I wore as a baby, and the doll clothes that my grandmother made for my sister and I. She knitted, crocheted, embroidered, cut and stitched each piece, carefully wrapped them in tissue paper, and sent the box from her house in Minnesota to our farm in Michigan. Each year at Christmas we would open a wonderland of carefully-composed beauty. Our grandma didn’t believe in wearing a lot of dark colors. She loved bright hues, and our doll clothes were pieces of her wardrobe in vivid greens, reds, pinks, yellows, aquas. Our tiniest dolls enjoyed hand-knit sweaters and embroidered pillowcases for their beds. I carried scraps of memories of certain colors, outfits, a particular fabric or button, for many years until they became paintings.