logo
ENFRع
#

Latest news with #caretaker

My Mother, the Artist, Discovered at 90
My Mother, the Artist, Discovered at 90

New York Times

time22-07-2025

  • General
  • New York Times

My Mother, the Artist, Discovered at 90

In the past month, I have been selling and giving away paintings. They are not the work of a famous artist or even my own output. No, they are the 400-painting oeuvre of my 90-year-old mother. A literature scholar by profession, she retired long ago from teaching and had painted nearly every day for 30 years due to a fiendish work ethic. But four months ago, she was diagnosed with cancer. I have been helping her with her chemotherapy appointments, among other only-child caretaker duties. For me, there has been a parallel quest, though: to sell or give away some of her oil paintings, many of which are still stored in her apartment. Finding homes for the paintings while she is still with me has taken on a strange urgency — I want her to know where they will dwell. I ask the new owner of each painting to send me a photograph to show her where it hangs. Yet there is more to it than that. As a result of cataloging and handling her work, I understand better what it is that she was doing, painting away, often alone, with only a few people — her fellow amateur artist retiree friends and the like — ever seeing most of what she made. Paintings can be seen as commemorating time or capturing individual subjectivity. While decades of art criticism have put these truisms in question, for my mother painting did give shape to her way of seeing. Why hadn't I paid more attention to her paintings before? Looking anew, I found out things about her that I had never bothered to think about — children, of course, don't tend to dwell on their parents' ambitions or reveries. My guess is that painting made her feel free, outside of time, age, self-criticism, self-doubt and even social class. My mother painted when she was young, and her abstract oils hung in our living room. I didn't think about them very much when I was a kid, although their very '60s color schemes might explain why my favorite color is orange. Then she took a long break, a career to attend to, a child to raise, teaching, with its small pleasures mixed with blue-book-grading drudgery. But after her early retirement from the City University of New York system — the buyouts of the 1990s — she suddenly had time for art classes. She describes it as 'a whole second life.' Some days, she'd paint all day long, sometimes just in the mornings. She painted in the Berkshires with painting friends and in a studio in an old-time artists' building in Union Square, a relic of an art scene in Manhattan that barely exists. All of this — being able to retire early, obtaining a reasonably priced studio to paint in (with excellent light, praise be), even an accessibly priced summer home — was, admittedly, part of an entire system of affordability that has basically vanished from many of our major cities. My mother was generationally lucky in this way. Over the years, my mom was in group exhibitions but never sought out a gallery show. To this day, she has a mixture of self-effacement and pride about her work. Her paintings may not be 'worth' a gallery show, in her mind, but they certainly shouldn't be cast out on the streets. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Thug left dangling upside down as he gets stuck in window while attempting to escape 'cannabis farm' during police raid
Thug left dangling upside down as he gets stuck in window while attempting to escape 'cannabis farm' during police raid

Daily Mail​

time20-07-2025

  • Daily Mail​

Thug left dangling upside down as he gets stuck in window while attempting to escape 'cannabis farm' during police raid

This is the moment a gang member gets stuck upside down while attempting to escape through a window, as police swoop in on a 'cannabis farm' in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. He was caught red-handed with five others, while trying to steal a crop of around 260 cannabis plants from another criminal 'caretaker'. Click above to watch the video in full.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store