Ode to Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart is back in the news. Somebody thinks that they found her.

I learned about Amelia Earhart (born in 1897 -vanished in 1937)  when I was in the third grade because my teacher Miss Frost read her biography to us. She was an outstanding person, a pioneer in aviation and a strong supporter of women’s rights .  The story of her disappearance was an impactful and disturbing event to me… It is easy to understand the often recurring search for her.

Although it is uncomfortable and troubling I do live with the uneasy belief that she vanished.

One day I looked at the arm of my neighbor, Aimee, and I noticed her tattoo of an airplane. It was not a small, old fashioned plane of the type that Amelia Earhardt used when she flew through the skies, but it was beautiful. I took a photo. A few weeks later, a friend mentioned that she believed that I had never painted a painting about the death of my sister Amy in a major dc-10 crash.  I decided to add the airplane as a shape in my paintings.

In my abstract painting I use simple shapes that become personal icons. For example , I did a series of large drawings of pocket books and airfields and another series of explosions, ladders, and tutus. The viewer does not need to “get it” because these are personal icons that gain depth of meaning even to me. Currently, geometric shapes reoccur and these shapes will become meaningful through use.

While working on these current paintings I became interested in “vanishing”. I incorporated “vanishing” into the paintings , while realizing that as we travel through our lives more and more of the “familiar” vanishes. Cherished values are vanishing. Then too, while in the presence of a narcissist,  we might personally feel that we have vanished. Therefore, this group of paintings is The Ode to Amelia Earhardt. She symbolizes so much!