Pubescent cousins at the family house in Seattle, Washington. Theo and Johnny Peterson, sister and brother, Cousin Kay in the middle. The love and care between those children lasted their entire lifetimes. Johnny died first, breaking everyone's heart he was that tender a man. He was lost to his family quickly and quietly.
This is the first of the family series I began in the little studio at Market and Sixth in San Francisco. As mom was dying, I comforted myself with family photos. I worked this one in many forms, copying, coloring, cropping, mixing, finally painting in oil, then going back to the image, collaging some more.
I'm not sure why I found so much fodder in this photo. Looking again for reason, the serious faces, the shadows that cut across their faces and in the window reflection, appears to foretell the loss they would come to experience over each other. Perhaps I was comforted by Johnny's protective position on the stairs, keeping the girls safe from oncomers and how mom protected Theo with arms clasped around her waist. The solidarity of these serious children appealed to me, in a time when my own sisters and I would face our most difficult separation.
I'm sure the Peterson house could not have been painted the same strange pink that our own family home had been when we moved into it in nineteen-fifty-five; there must be transference there in some way. The children didn't really have red hair. There was a time, quite a long time, when I had some absolutes I believed in. All sculpture is Bronze. All dogs are Big. All shoes are Red. I wasn't aware at the time, but surely All heads are Red was just as true as the others. It was a time that simple truth and certainty were hard to come by, so I made some of my own.
