My mother's parents were immigrants from Bukovina, Romania. She grew up one of nine children on their farm in Niagara Falls, Ontario. My uncle says she painted a beautiful mural in their high school gym and for years, teachers used it to make her younger siblings feel unaccomplished.
After high school, she moved to Washington, D.C. (the only one of the family to leave Ontario), where she attended the Corcoran College of Art and worked at a top law firm as a secretary. She was the only one of her graduating class to be offered a job in art, but she was making too much money at the law firm, and so turned it down. She met my father, a fellow Canadian, in D.C.
My mom always was making beautiful things. She painted a Chagall type mural on my childhood bedroom ceiling, and Grandma Moses type scenes on our family room walls, so that it was like walking into the countryside, almost.
I wish I could do justice to her talent and accomplishments, but most of her work is in Canada. Someday I will have it photographed properly.
My mother is in the middle.