February 2023
at home in Nebraska
At the end of January, I spent a week in my hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. My kids and husband and I stayed in my parent’s house, which is the house I grew up in.
So many memories are in that house and in the landscape all around it. I soaked up the familiar feelings of the old neighborhood, the big sky, and the horizontal expanses.
I didn’t really get out because I wanted to slow down with my kids and be with my parents and my siblings. But my mom indulged me in one art outing. We went to the International Quilt Museum. That spiraled me into more childhood memories of my Grandma Joy in her quilting workshop.
In this edition of the Print Club, I share lots of personal stories about the visit, growing up in that physical space, and about my grandmother. AND I share some scraps antique fabric as a tangible aid to the stories. Some of the fabric is from my Grandma Joy herself.
I made a painting from a Nebraska landscape immediately after I returned to the studio. I was in Lincoln in September 2022 too, and I took a quick shot of a grain elevator with my phone near the train tracks on the southern boarder of town. Lincoln is a city of a quarter million but it sprawls into sparse buildings and agriculture as soon as you hit the city limits. I miss it and love it.
I often want to talk about the impact of place, but landscapes have been a little scary and unapproachable as painting content for me. Making a ruddy Nebraska landscape took away all the anxiousness. Hope you like it and I hope you have a great month.
-Liz
