Summer Explosion

Watercolor (unframed, no mat). This riot of color is the garden Mom always wanted. As the trees around her house got ever more mature, throwing her beds into increasing shade, she never did get her flowers to bloom in this profusion. She had to paint them instead.

The Old Pump

Watercolor (no frame or mat), 9.25" x 13". There's a charming pub in the heart of Hampshire called The Mayfly. It sits next to a crystal clear trout stream, has charming architecture and a great garden. One of Mom's favorites, it inspired several scenes including this one. I live just half an hour from the pub now, and will think of Mom whenever I go.

Missouri Autumn

Matted watercolor, 18" x 24". Here's proof that you don't have to go far for inspiration. This is the view off Mom's back deck, as the fall leaves started to turn. We traveled to so many places, but she never lost sight of the fact that home was exquisitely beautiful.

Sunrise Tree Everglades

Matted watercolor, 16" x 20". As much as Mom loved traveling to Europe, part of her heart always stayed in Florida. Though she never got her retirement apartment overlooking the Atlantic, we were able to travel there regularly through the years. Cutting from one coast to the other meant a drive over Alligator Alley ... one very early ride inspired this picture.

Giverny Pond

Matted watercolor, 16" x 20". Mom and I spent a glorious summer holiday in France in 1997, first wandering around chateau in the Loire, then heading to Normandy to visit Monet's garden at Giverny. That's Monet's rowing boat moored at the top of the picture, from which he used to paint those famous water lilies. You're getting a bit of reflection in this photo from the cellophane that's wrapped around the painting; the actual painting is a bit brighter.

Place of Rest

Matted watercolor, 16" x 20". Someday, I'll figure out where this is. The willow, the lake and the architecture of the garden folly tells me we're at an English stately home, but I have no idea which one. Joanlee, after all, visited scores of them, and had a pile of photos a foot high that she planned to turn into watercolors. Someday I might find the photo that she worked from for this. In the mean time you'll have to go by her title: "Place of Rest".

A Profusion of Pansies

Matted watercolor, 12" x 20". Mom loved color, and got a chance to show it off here. I was planting the pansies. She was painting and directing my labor...

English Willow

Matted watercolor, 16" x 20". English gardens are famous for their planned informality. Everything has been set out with rigorous discipline, but the end result is supposed to look as it the scene just grew up naturally. The master of this style was Capability Brown, who designed the park at Petworth, from where Mom drew this scene. The contrast of the ancient willow and the neoclassical temple in the garden is a classic.

Spring Awakening

Matted watercolor, 13.25" x 20.5". Mom was fascinated by trees, but liked them best when they were old and characterized by interesting trunks. Here she captures the magic of spring, when pale wood starts to bristle with new growth.

Stone Guardian

Matted watercolor (measurement to come ... approx. 10" x 12"). This was a real departure in style for Mom. She was playing with combining sketching with watercolor, and had gone for an Asian feel with the turtle on the right and the corner of the Oriental lamp on the left. A unique look amongst her work.

The Indian

Matted watercolor, 10" x 14". This old cigar store indian stands outside of a friend's house in the Missouri countryside.

Mountain Scene

Matted watercolour, 11" x 14". Mom did a whole series of this snow covered, pine-ringed mountain glen; all but this one have been sold. The inspiration was the Scottish highlands, where we spent a fantastic Christmas break in 2003.

Old Tree at Faust Park

Matted watercolor, 11" x 14". How they do go on in the Northeast about the glory of their fall color. Well, any Missourian knows that our forests glow with a jewel-like intensity in a good season. Trees always fascinated Mom, particularly when they were just about to lose their leaves, or stripped bare for the winter.

Purple Tree at Wraysbury Lake

Matted watercolor, 11" x 14". Mom loved the house in Wraysbury that I rented for five years. Its best feature was the amazing view to the lake that stretched beyond my back garden. The shoreline was broken by this distinctive tree which, facing West, caught the setting sun every night.

The Chimnea

Matted watercolor, 8" x 10". Chimneas may have originated in Mexico, but they couldn't be more perfect for England, where even at the height of summer a heat source in the garden is usually a good idea. Mom captured this cozy little scene on the back patio of my house in Wraysbury.

Yellow Gladiolas

Matted watercolor, 11" x 14". A delicate study of one of Mom's favorite flowers. Classically Joanlee.

Koi and Lilly Pads

Matted watercolor, 8"x10". A variety of multi-colored fish playing in a pond.

My Rabbit Friend

Matted watercolor. 5" x 7". Mom collected figurines of rabbits from her youth; anyone who visited her house couldn't miss them. She painted very few, however. Here's a real one, no doubt about to eat the blooms in the garden.

From Hound Tor

Matted watercolor, 11"x14". The wilds of Dartmoor are known for their tors, piles of massive granite boulders that form mountainous promontories from which you can see for miles. In Mom's more active days she managed to scramble up a few of these. This is the view from Hound Tor, one of our favorites.

From the Terrace at Chandler Hill

Matted watercolor, 8"x10". Moving much closer to home ... this is the 19th century farmhouse that sits below Chandler Hill Winery. I think Mom got the vivid reds of a Missouri fall perfectly here.

Ancient Church, Dartmoor

Matted watercolor. 8"x10". Dartmoor, in the Southwest of England, is one of the country's few wild regions. It's mostly dramatic moorland stretching for miles, populated only by sheep and wild ponies. There are, however, in its sheltered valleys, some cozy villages that look like they haven't changed in centuries. This church is in Widecombe, one of the prettiest. Mom spent a happy afternoon perched on a rock in the hills above it, painting this and several other scenes.

Irish Wheat Field

Framed. 9.75" x 12.5". Can hang or sit on table top when built in arm is extended. Mom was swept away by the beauty of the Irish countryside when we explored it during the late summer of 1999. Though the famous greens were a delight to the eye, she was much more taken by the startling contrast of the golden, freshly-harvested wheat fields on the landscape. This one stretched away from the veranda of our B&B, a Georgian country house near Waterford. I like the contrast of the formal urn on the lower left with the country beyond it. This is also a particularly lovely frame.

Beyond

Framed intaglio print. 25" x 30.5". Anybody know who does the set dressing for Mad Men? If so, call them right away ... because this is exactly the kind of thing Don Draper would have had hanging in his office. (Mom, incidentally, actually studied commercial art and wanted to get a job in an ad agency, but nobody would even consider giving employment to a Catholic girl about to get married in those days. Just as well. Joanlee had a puritannical streak that wouldn't have mixed well with that industry.) This striking print is probably the best of all her abstract work, and she showed it heavily in art competitions in the '60s. There's a list of prizes won for it between 1962 and 1971 on the back.

Prying Eyes

Framed (no glass). 13.25" x 16.25". Oil on canvas. Mom hated figure painting; this and the next canvas, both from the early '60s, are the only pictures of people you'll find in her whole body of work. The prying eyes refer to the girl staring over the shoulder of the main figure. OK, I admit it. It's a creepy painting. But remember, it's a charity auction. Put in a bid for the hell of it and give it to someone for Halloween. An artistic interpretation of the concept "haunting".

Sisterhood

Oil on canvas, unframed. 18" x 24". Those of you who knew my mother well can amuse yourselves pondering the psychology behind this one. Ghostly, sad and stylistically very much of its time. (1964)

Wraysbury Lake

Framed. 10" x 12". Back on familiar Joanlee territory: trees and England. These lovely specimens are clustered around the edge of Wraysbury lake. A series of gravel pits during WWII, the industrial landscape around Wraysbury was turned into lakes after the war and is now a particularly picturesque little community near Heathrow airport. I rented a house there for five years which looked out over the main lake, giving Mom the chance to capture this.

The Missing Line

Framed (thin wooden strip, no glass). 31.75" x 41". Oil on canvas. Mom dabbled in abstraction in the late '60s. It was, of course, the style. She did a few excellent pieces, this amongst them, but actually found the style quite constraining. She had to do much more planning for these paintings, with preliminary sketches and lots of prep work before starting. This one, of course, demanded ruthless discipline for all those straight lines. (And ruthless discipline was not, we all know, one of Joanlee's strengths.) Somewhere amongst the weeks it took to paint this, she actually forgot to do one line. She didn't notice it until years later. After which she made it a bit of a party game for visitors to the house. Could they find the missing line?

Fleurs Jaune

Framed. 24" by 27". Few things are more cheerful than a bunch of yellow flowers in a blue vase. Mom never made it to Provence, but she would have painted a lot more like this had she done so. Even though this was done in the early '70s, before she made it to France, to me it shows the influence of French 19th century painters and her desire to visit the artistic inspirations of Europe.

Lilacs II (engraving)

Framed.24" x 18.5". The same lilacs as the last painting, but done here as an engraving. Mom dabbled in woodcuts, engraving and printing in the early '70s. She enjoyed it and was good at it, but the cost of equipment and the space it required turned her away from this medium. The photo really doesn't do this justice: the level of precision and detail in the flowers and leaves is fantastic, much closer to her line drawing style than to her free flowing painting.

Lilacs

Framed. 24" x 27". Another from Mom's series of floral vase paintings of the '70s, this abundant bunch of lilac was cut from the bushes next to our house on Manteca Lane. Look at this, and I think you can still conjure their lush perfume today. There's some browning with age on the edges of the mat; the painting could probably benefit from a fresh mat and a more modern frame.

Les Fleurs

Framed (no glass). 31" x 37". In the early '70s, Mom concentrated on oil painting and flowers. She did a whole series of large arrangements in vases. She loved fresh flowers, and rather than spending a fortune on the real thing, she painted versions that could brighten a room forever. This is the brightest in the series.

Winter's Trees

Framed. 24.5" x 36.25". Joanlee's oldest work; she did this at the age of 16 under the tutelage of artist Esther Reed. It shows her fascination with trees from the very beginning. The depth achieved with such a limited color palette here is striking. It could probably use a new frame to bring out the magic of the work; it's been in this one for four decades!

The Seasons

Framed (no glass). 24.5" x 36.25". A modern interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, this oil on canvas dates all the way back to the early '60s and was judged by Mom's professors at Washington University Art School to be the best work she did while there. It went on to win a variety of prizes in various St. Louis art shows in the following years.

Aloha, Puna Village Cafe

Framed. 18.5" x 22.5" You're going to have to use a bit of imagination here; the glass was so reflective I couldn't get a decent shot. This little cafe nestled between palm trees and tropical bushes is just off a lava flow and black sand beach on the big island of Hawaii. With the explosion of color and the merry umbrellas out front, this is a tropical breeze on your wall.

In the village of Chester

Framed. 14" x 16". OK, I admit it. This one is a rather strange, psychedelic vision unless you have the context. In the past decade the city of Chesterfield has invested in public art, including the red bicycles in front of the strip malls in The Valley, the grazing metal horses beside Edison Avenue and the rather creepy but very impressive awakening giant who's pushing out of the ground next to the library. (Those are his hands in the center of the picture.) Mom did this for a Chesterfield art show celebrating all the sculpture; it's a great piece for anyone who lives in the area.

Pua Mae 'Ole (The flower that never fades)

Framed. 13" x 16". For those of you who remember and appreciated Joanlee's talent for driving a bargain in any shopping situation, this is the painting for you. We were returning to the cruise ship in Kauai when she stopped to chat to a florist who was selling extravagant arrangements to take back onto the ship. They retailed for $50 on up, but by the end of the conversation about Mom's painting, her cancer diagnosis and the wonderful birthday cruise her daughter was taking her on, the florist had laid one of the biggest arrangements on the table in Mom's lap and told her to paint it so she could always remember the islands. The modern colors and the sleek black frame give this a more modern feel than much of Mom's stuff. The patterning at the top is reflection off the glass, not marks on the mat.

Wilton House 2006

Framed. 11.5" x 13.5" Wilton House, near Salisbury, is the stately home of the Earls of Pembroke. Hundreds of years of art masterpieces and a famous Palladian bridge in the gardens, but Mom was most taken by this unusual old pine tree. You can just see the corner of the house on the right. (And you can see the photographer reflected in the glass; an effect you'll lose in your own home!) The frame has an arm to stand on a table if you don't with to hang it.

Cow in meadow

Framed. 7" x 9". This rustic wooden frame is perfect for the country scene. We're in Ireland here, deep in County Clare where wandering dairy cows regularly held up traffic on the little single-lane roads. Mom couldn't resist capturing one for posterity. You can hang this, or pull back the arm built into the frame and prop it on a table.

A View From the Cabin

Framed. 10" x 12". This scene of a boat sailing across a rocky shore comes from South Wales; that's an old parish church on the coast behind. The white blotches in the forefront are my poor photography; I couldn't get a shot without reflection off the glass. The double matting of gray and navy is beautiful, and the frame can either be hung or set on a table top by folding out the frame's arm. A great painting for anyone who appreciates rocky, wild coasts.

Old Gray Barn

Framed, 12" x 15". A classic Missouri barn, now preserved amongst the historic buildings at Chesterfield's Faust Park. Lovely shadows and a striking interplay of color between the grays of the barn and the greens of the trees. Accepted for a St. Louis Watercolor society show. In a plain silver wooden frame with a white double mat.