Mom's Paints

One of the things I ended up with after Mom died was her painting supplies. Painting was something Mom took up after she retired, and became quite passionate about in the 90's. The painting supplies were packed up in a number of boxes , and have been stored in my storage unit.

Years ago I did some watercolors, and have always intended to start painting again. Last week we were in Michaels so that Eloise could buy some more knitting yarn and I picked up a book on oil painting which kind of got the juices flowing. So yesterday I went to the storage unit and retrieved the boxes of Mom's painting supplies.

I really hadn't paid that much attention to what was there when I put the stuff in storage, so it was an interesting adventure to go through it all yesterday -- and it brought back a lot of memories as well, which was good.

There are two fishing tackle boxes filled with paints -- one for oils and another for acrylics. There are about 100 tubes of oils and probably 50 of acrylics. Then there's a box of 50 or so brushes. Another box contains about 10 canvases and five or six frames. More than enough supplies to keep me busy for a long time. And worth a considerable amount of money if you've ever priced good brushes or paints.

What was even more fun was finding a couple of new things Mom had painted. We have a number of her works already, but finding these was special. One was a water color she had done in 2000, likely the last thing she painted since she never set up the oils after moving to Houston. Another was an unfinished oil of bluebonnets -- but actually it's close enough to finished to go ahead and spray and frame. And there's also an underpainting of a Lilly (all the detail done in grey tones). She did several of the Lilly, and it's interesting to see one in an intermediate stage.

The boxes also included the books that Mom used along with her lessons to learn to paint. I started reading them last night, and it provided a lot of insight into the methods she used. There's also her notebook with her notes from her lessons.

So it was a good afternoon of discovery and remembering as I start down a path of following in Mom's footsteps.