Hildagarde and Cake

Hildagarde and Cake /Oil on Canvas/ 20" x 20"

Hildagarde Dowdle Callahan was my maternal grandmother and this painting looks nothing like her…but it’s a tribute to her. She was such a good cook and loved baking pound cakes! I placed the jar she kept her flour in for her baking in the lower right.  She was a quilter, gardener, shop keeper, painter, weaver and seamstress. Her large knuckled hands were in constant motion. In an old wicker rocker on her front porch waving to the cars that went by, she would string green beans, crochet or knit.  I’ve seen her with a dowager rod searching for water and later having my grandfather dig her a well. She knew the local farmers and knew when a field had been freshly plowed. It was a grand opportunity to go in search of shards of Cherokee pottery and arrowheads.  I think she had a sixth grade education but she was a renaissance woman to me. When I was born my mother told me she walked into the hospital nursery, bundled me up and took me home. You could do that in the mountains of NC in 1952. I was her first grandchild. Rosemary is the herb of remembrance. If you look closely, I tucked a little sprig of it in an envelope for memories of the Smokey Mountains and Hilda.     www.kwillspaint.com