Shopper’s Paradise
16X16, Oil on Museum Quality Panel, Sold
A Scene from Cahors, France

I’m just home from Ireland this week and already planning my trip to Italy in June, so, naturally, I had to paint this scene from southern France. I’m like one of those compasses spinning round and round and just can’t decide which way I’m headed next! The hubby and the puggies, though, are just very glad I’m home. It’s been almost exactly one year since I lost my mom, and it feels like I am beginning to come up for air again after a long dream. Working and staying busy and painting obsessively helps, but nothing compares to the healing properties of time.

I still have this strong regret that I was never able to take my mother with me on my travels. She was a dreamer and a poet and a romantic, too (I think all of those things go hand in hand…). I know she would have loved the people of these ancient lands, the outdoor markets of southern France, the farmlands of Ireland, even more than the ancient structures or impressive histories. She loved people, meeting strangers, engaging them in conversation about everyday things, and finding a way to make them laugh (much to my chagrin when I was a teenager tagging along behind her in the grocery store…). Thank goodness I left that teenage self behind and realized long ago what a rare and beautiful person my mother was. I had many opportunities to tell her this, too. For that, I am so very, very thankful.