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| My mothers portrait by Joseph Wallace King |
Happy Mothers Day- ! Like the soft pink petals of the rose a mother never fades away she becomes a beautiful potpourri of memories and love - And I'm certainly very grateful and fortunate to still have my lovely mother-
In a funny aside, many years ago I had this oil sketch done of my mother (as a gift for my father) by the late artist Joseph Wallace King, who at that time was the only American to have painted Queen Elizabeth -! I guess I figured if he was good enough for the queen he was good enough for my mother LOL !
An interesting fellow with an interesting background we met through Leigh Rose when I did the foyer for the Shakespeare Festival decorator show house on Arbor Road- Leigh and her husband Selwyn had moved to Winston-Salem from Beverly Hills, California where Leigh drove a Rolls-Royce - with a gold key - she told me it was in the shop more often than in her garage- through Leigh I became friends with Joe's second wife Deborah, who divided her time between homes in Florence, Italy and Winston-Salem. Deborah and I also participated in the Gourmet Gala - which was another fundraiser charity event back then and it was a lot of fun.
Another eccentric and funny thing about Joe was that he only had one arm- imagine a one armed portrait painter ! But no one thought anything of it- he was very talented - and his first wife, Earline King, was a classically trained sculptor- they had this glamorous house at the end of Arbor Road across from JoAnn Reynolds' estate- that rambled on and on like something out of a Hollywood version of a Connecticut country house and the most interesting thing to me was it had a very serpentine curved pierced brick wall that wrapped around the entire property which was hung with Ivy- it was amazingly beautiful- DF
