Last Miniature for a While, And a Poem

3x3 inches, acrylic

I finished the last miniature destined to be shipped up to the Paint Box Gallery in Door County for their miniature show. This one has a very different feel to it, in subject matter and execution.  I tried to simplify the image, but ended up fussing over it longer than I intended. The original inspiration was a black and white snapshot of my brother-in-law's grandmother in her farmhouse kitchen.  I've been in the house, seen the beautiful refurbished wood stove.  The house was actually a log cabin, small, with a low porch.  The family has fixed it up and uses it as a bed and breakfast; Door County is a quite a resort area.  When guests check in they are treated to a warm loaf of bread and a little jar of homemade jam.  Grandma Miller would have appreciated that, I think.

Writing this made me think of a poem I like by Gwendolyn Brooks:

When you Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story

-And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes
on a Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday -
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation
And nothing-I-have-to-do and I'm-happy-why?
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come -
When you have forgotten that, I say,
And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,
And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;
And how we finally went into Sunday dinner,
That is to say, went across the front-room floor to the
ink-spotted table in the southwest corner
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles
Or chicken and rice
And salad and rye bread and tea
And chocolate chip cookies -
I say, when you have forgotten that,
When you have forgotten my little presentiment
That the war would be over before they got to you;
And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end
Bright bedclothes,
Then gently folded into each other-
When you have, I say, forgotten all that,
They you may tell,
They I may believe
You have forgotten me well.