Isn't She Lovely....

....this beautiful painting that my mom did when she went back to school to get her Master's Degree.  I've looked at this painting most of my life and am always intrigued by it.  I've been looking at all of my mother's art in different ways these days and wondering at her imagination and skill and how the most incredible things go from her brain and out through her hand.  She's 86 and still practices her calligraphy every day, writing backwards and forwards with her right hand, and then backwards and forwards with her left hand.  She's gotten away from drawing for some reason, and I've been asking her to draw me, like I used to do as a kid.  We've been having the most lovely portrait sessions, and even though she keeps saying, "Well, I don't know who this looks like!  It certainly doesn't look like you!" I don't care what the person that comes out of her brain and through her hand and into the pencil looks like.  It's the act of doing that's most important, listening to her talk to herself, watching the extreme concentration on her face, and knowing that her maze of a brain is working in the most profound and mysterious of ways....