"Betty Jean" is a painting of my dear mother from a rare black and white photograph of her at the age of 16. A midwestern farmer’s daughter, mom had very few nice things or fancy clothes. Her mother made her dresses … sometimes from flour sacks. In 1957. a year after I, her third child was born, she and my father were persuaded by an aunt “to move to California. The land of opportunity.” And they built a good life here. My interpretation combined her poignant expression with remnants of the soil she toiled in as a child and her zest for life at age age 86. I think it captures much of her life and person that I loved. She died in 2022.

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Lori@lorirhodesart.com