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.
This kind soul wanted me to know how much she loved Mary's work and to say that she had fallen in love with several of the paintings that she saw in the apartment building where Mary lived. She added that her mother lived there as well, but in fact her mother had passed away just days before she contacted me.
I had no idea any paintings remained at Mary's old residence, because the family had done our best to remove all her things and either distribute them or donate them long ago. Mary left there to live for more than a year in an apartment at Quarry Hill's assisted living before she died. I was dismayed to learn now that a number of Mary's paintings were on the walls of the trash/recycling area of the apartment building.
After contacting the building management, I was able to arrange for this very caring woman to come and select several paintings for herself. She did so and I have uploaded them to this site. In addition, she took the remaining paintings, while suffering in her painful time of loss, some of which had been screwed right through the canvas into the wall of the trash room, and attached hanging wires to those that lacked them, and put them up in common areas where the residents could enjoy them. She told me she had come to really love Mary's work during the years that her own mother was a resident there. That she could be so caring of the paintings at such a time and notify me as she had really touched me. had it not been for Pinterest, I doubt we ever would have connected as we have.
I conclude this post with a photograph I took recently of some beautiful calligraphy made by the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh whom I had the blessing to see and hear in New York in September. His lovely calligraphy captures his clear, loving philosophy of living, and I share this "Breathe, My Dear" with all who suffer and grieve or are otherwise burdened with the cares of life. He is 87 years old and an amazing human being from whom I have learned a great deal. Mary would have loved him, I know.
The last photograph reminds me of Mary's funeral service when the chorus from Quarry Hill came to sing, "Beyond the Sunset."
