The Meaning Of Painting

I took a painting of some value to a restorer in Portland. Last week I asked a framer here in Portland of he could clean it and re frame the picture (It has pulled from the frame and started to wrinkle at the top). The painting by artist A.J. Drysdale was given to my grandfather by the artist during the depression in the early 1930's. The story I have from my mother is that he paid my physician grandfather for treating him with the painting.

Drysdale was from Georgia but as a boy of 15 came to New Orleans with his family to live. He learned to paint here and became enchanted with the swamps around New Orleans. To enhance the swamp look, Drysdale mixed kerosene into his paints, giving a blurred appearance to the scenes.

My painting is of a swamp north of Louisiana and features a huge cypress tree (they grow in water and are a favored wood for homes because of their resistance to flooding) and is huge, making the value greater than most of Drysdale's paintings.The restorer said the painting is in good shape but needs cleaning varnishing and remounting in the frame. It will cost $300 dollars but the painting is more than 80 years old and has never been attended to. My mom and dad hung it in their house an after their deaths I also did the same in mine. Moving the picture caused some of the problems to it.

Having a piece of art that has value and has been passed from the artist to one's family, and continues to be handed down, from my grandfather to my parents to me, is a nice tie that binds me to my family in an abstract way. Of course art or any material object is not what is important in life, but a material thing like this painting reminds me of my family, now all departed.

I am a sentimental type and have a number of "reminders" of loved ones who are gone from my life. Do you have any familial objects you treasure because of an identification of it with them?