Ann
My lady of the tango.
Ann has both short-term and long-term memory loss, although her cognitive understanding of life is still evident. This means that she can listen to stories, watch movies and enjoy them, but when you ask questions of her own life she often responds that she doesn't remember.
Ann's coping and compensating strategy for her memory loss is to make things up. She doesn't like finding herself admitting that she doesn't remember. She also has what I call mythologized memories. Mythologized memories are where she takes a lifetime of memories that she can no longer hold in her mind and creates a symbol of that activity. I believe that she has condensed a lifetime of memories of ballroom dancing into a memory of dancing the tango in a rose colored dress.
This study of Ann was done from a photo I took of her in the nursing home. I substituted a chair for her wheel chair. In her room is a common print on the wall of a white wood lawn chair set in a garden. I had decided to change the subject of the painting on the wall to a couple dancing the tango, with the woman in a rose colored dress, but when I finished the study of Ann, and realized just how well I had captured her, I decided to dispense with any background.
This is just a study. I'm putting it away for a while and then I will work on the actual painting.