Precious Memories by Leada Wood

Precious Memories by Leada Wood©
www.leadawood.com

This is an ARTifact © painting I had started some time ago and when the Creative Catalyst posted their Holiday Challenge, it inspired me to get it out and finish it.
This week's challenge was community, and to me community is all about family.

My family growing up was very close...with aunts, uncles, and cousins by the dozens. Love, music and food was the glue that held our family together...kept us close.
We would have gatherings on Sunday afternoons. The kids would all run free outdoors while the grown ups got down with their country and gospel music. They were serious musicians...not for money, just for the love of making music. They would play all Sunday afternoon and then reluctantly put away their instruments and go home. They were good people, plain, hard working, God fearing folks. I can remember Pappa playing his guitar every day...I think it was his way of relaxing when he came home from work.

My Pappa was a clock repairman and jeweler and owned his own shop. He was very good at fixing things, everything. He liked to fix up cars and sell them in his spare time. The clock in this painting was his family clock, bought on the day he was born. I love clocks...guess they remind me of him. I use them in my art a lot. Always mindful of time, and how fast it passes and how there is never enough of it. Time...elusive... gone...never to be reclaimed...spend it wisely.

My family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, Pappa are all gone now. Wish I had listened better to all their old stories, maybe taken the time to write them down. Now they are all gone...dust in the wind.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so maybe I can tell my stories in paintings...to help remember my family...to keep our stories alive...to pass them on.

Precious memories...how they linger.