The Last Garden

Acrylic on canvas

38" x 56", 2000

This painting is loosely based on Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” It is portrait of my parents. They are in their beautiful backyard garden in Minnesota. For many of us, the garden is a kind of “Paradise Lost”, a Garden of Eden, where we can escape from the harsh realities of life with our loved ones. In this painting I have transported my parents’ garden to Montauk Point, New York, placing them at the Atlantic Ocean. My mother has never seen the ocean, because she has never once left the Midwest.