‘Your daddy’s a Yankee, but we still love you’ was the greeting we got every time we ventured to South Carolina to visit my mother’s side of the family. By the time we were old enough to know our family, they had moved off the farm and into town. My grandmother had raised four children, largely on her own, and her brothers had built an empire of vending machines throughout the region…trading old land traditions for wealth grounded in mobilities and convenience. Who is to blame them after growing up in a tiny wooden house with no running water in the hills above Anderson. My great grandmother regretted being taken out of school after completed the 8th grade to work in the cotton mill to help support the family. Women’s education was not highly valued then. But she ended her life in comfort with a loving family…her spirit shining till the end. These paintings were created with oil on burlap and depict the mill where three generations of my family worked from the time they were children…before child labor laws were enacted. I look up to the matriarchs of my family, who stood strong against alcohol and abuse to give their children the best opportunities they could provide. These women were just and fair minded and stood up for these values, even during the most intense years of the civil rights movement scoured the south. These works maintain a brilliance despite the context of abandonment.

Works: lintheads – oil on burlap – 36″ x 28″ – 2007