The last months of 2019 are in the rearview mirror, and I’m happy to have them behind me.

I leave that time a little bruised and vulnerable, having lost my mother to a rapid decline from stage 4 cancer in mid November. She was a force of nature and a muse to many. I’m learning to live in the world without her, and still wake astonished with that thought.

My mom was a farmgirl in the forties and fifties. She wanted to be a cowgirl and went on to teach English and work as an editor. She wrote, and organized and made creative, interesting things happen everywhere she went. In these footsteps I follow.

I painted this young girl with a rooster a few weeks before Mom died. If anyone could tame and hold a rooster, it would have been my mom. I imagine this rooster’s name is Henry. Isn’t he a handsome fellow?