Pink Mother-In-Law's Rose 2013

Client: Lori Marie McDonald for Joan Marie Edwards.
Location: Mesa, Arizona.
Year: 2013.
Occasion: Mother's Day and Birthday in 2013.
Significance: Long Story. I resurrected my deceased maternal grandmother's techniques of growing roses to draw or paint and started drawing them myself in 2013. This render is my first to emulate my grandmother's techniques and memory.

I started with commercial drawing paper and a pink rose blossom with several buds which were placed in a clear glass vase. I gathered a collection of pink, cream, white, pale pinkish blush and peacock green and apple-green Prisma pencils. I then collected the specific shades of avocado and a wide assortment of green inks from Dr. Martin, F/W inks, and even more green shades of pencils. I used three varieties of fine-tipped quills and had watercolor paints on standby if needed. My maternal grandmother painted, and I rarely do. I draw. But I had to resurrect her presentation and colors and textures, regardless of the media I chose.

My Grandmother was Esther Frances ("Great Grandma 'Snow White'") Meloy-Coutu of Lowell, Massachusetts born in 1910, the second of four sisters and a brother. She was a US Navy Captain's wife during WWII, a mother, a grandmother who functioned as a co-mother and a water color and oils painter of much renown throughout Lowell, Weston, and Tewksbury, Massachusetts; South Orange County, California; and "The OC's" Beach Cities.

She taught oil painting and watercolors via the Laguna Niguel Art Association and at the Capistrano Valley Christian Schools; and drew roses that she grew in her own extensive garden in Monarch Bay Terrace, before applying watercolors on watercolors paper or oils on canvas.

She completed well over 600 rose paintings that were exacting renders of specific buds, blossoms and bouquets that she herself personally grew, cut and arranged like a professional florist. Some were sold through six or seven local galleries between the Beach Cities on the coast and the art galleries up in Idyllwild, California.

By 2006, the whereabouts of only twenty-four were still known. Lori and I needed to borrow every last one for professional laser scanning and color copying. All we have is twenty-four out of six hundred.

God! What a loss.

With her vision in drastic decline from several key specific diagnoses, to include inherited Macular Degeneration, she painted her last Rose Bouquet for Lori's and my wedding gift which was completed and delivered to my new bride on the boat that Lori and I exchanged our vows around 1430 (2:30 PM) in the afternoon on 14 February 1996.

Beloved to the last, Esther "Snow White" Coutu passed after 0500 in the morning on 12 January 2009, just twelve days shy of her 99th birthday.