My mom isn’t as sentimental as I thought she’s be. She recently moved away from the place where she’d lived the past 24 years, and took the opportunity to trash paintings and sculptures that previously were cherished as valuable objects of beauty and tokens of love. “Aaw, did I hurt your feelings? You’re a grown man and I can’t be expected to keep all this crap!” It took some work to convince her that the heavy raku chalice/ashtray that I’d gifted her ten years ago was worth keeping; I had dug the clay out from planet earth myself and built the oven over days and weeks before that piece was made! I think she tossed it while I wasn’t watching.
Her inner critic manifested in tossing the potatoe-print oil painting of a tree I made a couple of years ago, something I was utterly ok with. I mean, there’s a limit to the motherly indulgence.
Also, she’s always hated the comissioned painting of her home town that’s been hanging in the living room, and took the opportunity of cutting it in half, keeping the part she liked. That antenna annoyed her to no end.
There’s an anecdote about a painter who sold a painting and later showed up at the buyers house and start touching up his work. The buyer goes “WTF!” to which the artist replies “I’m not done yet.” My mom has wished that the artists would show up on her front step with a saw for the past fifteen years. I was glad to help.
