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The oil at the top is a fanciful portrait of Shielagh Mary painted in 1970. Her niece, Marietta Fagan Lee, exhibits many of Mary’s painting in her extensive art collection in Sarasota, Florida. The Marietta Museum of Art and Whimsy is a must for visitors and Floridians alike. She has paintings, sculptures, interactive pieces, and so much more. None of it for sale and all to be enjoyed from late November through May. Admission is free but donations are gratefully appreciated.

Last year I wrote here about meeting up with a great fellow who had been touched by my telling him about the painting “Head of Christ” that Mary had donated to the church where she is now buried. Evidently the pastor at that time had found it too intense for him and had it stashed it in a closet in his office where he showed it to me on the day of her funeral.

On this 2022 visit I sought out the gentleman who had been so kind to me last year and who had brought the painting up from the church basement where it had been propped against a wall for who knows how long. 

In September, 2021 I was in Maine with a friend and stopped in Camden to pay my respects to my mother Mary. We were able to go into the memorial garden where she is buried, and I wanted to see the plaque inside with her name, but the doors were locked. The man we asked outside who showed us in was very kind. I told him that she had given the former pastor a portrait of the head of Christ and that he had wanted to give it back to me. I said that I had told him that she wanted him to have it. The gentleman got an amazed look on his face, and he asked us to wait and hurried down to the basement. He returned carrying the painting and said he had discovered it down there only the day before. His eyes and mine filled with tears. He had only been working there a month, he told us, and finding this painting was so amazing to him. He had looked my mother up and found this site. I explained I had set it up for her. He asked me if I wanted the painting. I said, no, but if the church didn’t want it, I’d like him to have it. My home is filled with my mother’s beautiful work. I wrote the pastor and related this experience, and I left it up to her to decide where it will be. I will always be grateful to Zhibit for enabling me to display my mother’s  work here. So often over the years people have contacted me with a photo of a painting they think must have been done by her. Thank you for stopping here too!

A dear friend, Robert Eder, is making stunning painterly photographs combining aspects of the natural world with creative overlays of form and color. The image here, "Long Ago", is an example of his work. Click on the image to view more of his pieces. Gifted musicians such as German pianist Igor Levit are streaming’s performances for an international audience hungry for contact with the expressive experience of hearing and watching others engaged making music. Museum exhibits are available to view online. Even Zoom lectures on subjects as esoteric as the history of Jews and their influence in bringing chocolate to Europe and the new world can keep us learning and growing.

Here in 2019, some 14 years since her death, we are still contacted by owners of Mary’s work, seeking to confirm the work is hers, and in all cases but one, it has been. This week an art dealer seeking provenance and validation contacted us to ask if this lovely painting was hers. Evidently the signature had been cut off by a framer but the previous owner had added a handwritten note on the back crediting the painting to Mary “in the 1980s.” Yes, there is no doubt in my mind that it is Mary’s work, and we happily confirmed it.

As Mary’s only child, I am blessed to have many of her paintings in our home. We shipped them, as well as a portfolio of scores of unframed watercolors, to our home in Southwest Florida. The vivid colors fit so well with our tropical lifestyle. She painted two small oils in about 2002, one shown here, and surprised my husband and me each with one for the holidays. We had them framed simply and enjoy them in our living room.

When we moved south, we brought boxes of carefully wrapped treasures, long stored in our attic. A few had been displayed in a china closet we chose to leave behind for the next owner. Here you see old baby silver from me, my mother and her mother, her grandmother and her great grandmother going back to 1812, Venetian glass, Judaica, and the lovely 1913 Furnival’s Quail transferware dishes my parents bought in Santa Barbara in the ‘60s. The colorful tea set was a more recent find in Pier 1 my husband gave me for our anniversary a few years ago. This gorgeous china closet came from a consignment store here and suits us and our Florida lifestyle beautifully.

Earlier this year I closed my New York office after more than 20 years and relocated my clinical psychology private practice to the college town of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. I had the good fortune of meeting an esteemed psychiatrist here from whom I am renting a spacious office. After months of working there and enjoying the light pouring in from the three windows and the work I do within that space, I hung two of Mary's paintings that can be viewed as clients enter the room. We are blessed to own many of her beautiful paintings, many of which are uploaded here for your appreciation. 

This week would have been my parents' 64th wedding anniversary. Recalling this got me thinking of how they drove down into Mexico, into Baja California, on their honeymoon, driving Daddy's  Studebaker "Delilah." They came to an arroyo where the road was washed out and sat there looking at the water, wondering how they would get across. Out of nowhere a group of what I was told were called "banditos" complete with crossed bands of bullets across their chests and guns at their hips appeared and surrounded the car. My mother said she was scared. Then they removed their pants, put the bundles, including weapons, atop their heads, and carried the car safely to the other side. 

Like many others who enjoy saving images encountered online, I've begun using Pinterest and recently "pinned" several of Mary's paintings onto my Fine Art Pinterest Board. Someone recently followed a pin of one of these paintings to this website and contacted me via the form on the contact page.