During this day, National Poetry Month Day 4. it’s fitting to celebrate the beautiful life of TLS, my deceased sister-in-law, who was born on this day. She died during the #FluFiasco of 2019-20.
Besides my brother (who is two years older than me), I’ve known TLS longer than anyone living today on this planet. We were lifelong friends. I’ve posted about her before (here and here, among other posts). Additionally, I compiled a small book of tributes to honor her memory. Another website (my brother’s) highlights aspects of her life and art.
The walls of my brother’s home are very tastefully decorated with works of art produced by TLS as well as his own artwork. The image below is one of his. I’m intrigued by it.
It’s a reproduction, not an original, and because it was scanned and digitized, the quality is a little rough. When I asked him about it, he explained. The original was painted on canvas from a film negative. Back in the days before the ubiquity of smart-phone cameras, he’d used a traditional SLR (single-lens reflex) camera to capture this image of his then-girlfriend.
The unusual color renderings are typical with negatives because the photographic process takes a color positive (the resulting photo) and reverses colors. (Not a process I completely understand, but Wikipedia offers a simplified explanation for the novices like me.)
The stereotypical starving artists among us have been prone to sell their valued productions to live and eat. After he painted the original, my brother was neither starving nor in difficulty about paying his rent. Nevertheless, he sold the painting in the late 1960s. (He doesn’t recall who purchased it.)
The sonnet below is my humble acknowledgement of both the painting and the Girl.
