CEMETERY HOPPING (WITH MOM) by artist Andrea Bogdan

Acrylic on canvas and wood, recycled 
20 1/2" tall x  13 3/4" wide 

As usual, I freestyled it, so I wasn't sure exactly what it would turn out to be, but I tried to give it GRAVITY. While I was painting, I was thinking quite a lot about my mom and my time with her when I was very young. She passed away in February. I had been helping my dad to edit the eulogy he wrote for her, and he had mentioned that one of their favorite activities was visiting old cemeteries. And suddenly I remembered all the very, very old and worn-down gravestones I saw when I was young, especially the babies and children who were buried in the 19th century cemeteries we visited - I was obsessed with exercising my math skills and factoring the ages of all the cemetery occupants.

Apparently, in the 1800s around 46% of all New England children died before the age of five years old. Growing up, I couldn't imagine myself living past 18 years old. In thinking about my future self, I could vividly picture myself in a wood casket, underground, never surviving past school age. People would always ask me why, and I didn't know. Maybe it was the gravity embedded in the early mathematics problems I solved in old Berkshire county cemeteries. I'm so delighted that I lived past 18.