This painting was inspired by an Ohio State University yearbook. The twenty-two-year-old graduates, including the artist with their flat tops, bouffants, and flips, were optimistically ready to leave their student realm and enter the real world to make their mark. These graduates are now parents, and their own children are optimistically facing life as the graduates once had done. How quickly time passes and how speedily lost is our youthful idealism.
Tag: inspired
Gertrude’s Trunk- My New Hat
Rummaging through an old trunk once owned by Gertrude Hodgeman, a missionary nurse who worked in China, Fenton came across photographs, including one that had the pencil inscription “My New Hat” scrawled on the surface. Knowing that Ms. Hodgeman was long gone and thinking about the inscription, the artist was inspired to create a series of paintings dealing with the energy and vigor of the pictured youth and the fleetingness of that energy, idealism, and life itself.