The Sunflower

This painting hung in our house. It is a pretty good size maybe 36" x 24" and I seem to remember mom winning awards with it. Again it is just about the flower. I feel this predates the Poppies since the feel of this is much more rigid and not as loose as she got with the Poppies and even the Apples.

the sunflower

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Sig. of B. Capobianco makes me think this is an earlier oil

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(unfortunately the color is off )

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(unfortunately the color is off )

Poppies

Flowers. Mom would paint a lot of flowers. She'd take pictures of flowers and set up still-lifes of flowers. So let's conclude mom's oil period with two flower paintings. Both are interesting because they are both against white. The first is this odd little experimental gem. Poppies. She once more applied her heavy oil technique on this kind of lucite board. There is a nice looseness to the painting. A playful quality. Some flowers are more successful than others. It appears she was more learning here to paint in a loose way. Perhaps it was an assignment from her art class. In the end she did sign it. So she did find it a finished piece.

poppies 

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signature  of just Capobianco. So possibly an earlier oil in which she is learning or she just defaulted to signing it in her previous way. 

The Apple Tree

This unfinished oil painting, of what most definitely is the apple tree in the back yard of our house, could possibly be one of the last oils mom painted. It follows or proceeds the Apples, since she is still playing around with a more heavy impressionistic technique in applying the oils. The painting also feels abandoned as if mom's interest in watercolor was creeping into her art or she became fed up with oil.

That apple tree was huge. Much bigger than an apple tree should be. It was fun to climb but a pain in that my brother and I had to pick up the apples, which unfortunately tasted awful. It dominated the back yard and was a happy place for many a squirrel. We would count the nests in the upper parts of the tree as it always seemed to be a condominium for the local squirrel population.

The Apple Tree

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Folk Art Strawberry

This is also probably from the early to mid-70's although not as old as the similar folk art Harvest Basket she painted earlier. Mom loved going to craft fairs and antique shops. She loved Americana and the colonial era. We had a lot of pewter in the house and old glass jars. So it isn't a surprise that she would play around with folk art. Painted on wood, in acrylic. This painting hung around the house a lot.

folk art Strawberry

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signature on back. 

Using only Barbara Capobianco makes believe this is from the early 70's before she added 'Sisko'

Apples circa mid 70's

 I think because my mom was in the kitchen all the time she tended to paint what was near at hand. So she would work on still-lifes of fruit and flowers through the years both in oil and then starting in 1977 watercolor. Below is another fruit in oil, I guess you can say from her later oil painting period. Her later oils she got looser, with heavy handling of oil. painting with palette knife and such. She was always experimenting. These apples are unfortunately not signed and not dated.

apples 

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April 24, 2020

On April 24, Barbara Mary Sisko Capobianco, artist, nurse, mom and grandmother, died. A victim of both Alzheimer's and ultimately Covid-19. She was 78. Mom, was a great and wonderful person. A nurse, she would go out of her way to help people. People she didn’t even know that well. She certainly would have been on the frontline today during the pandemic, even at 78.  Everyone who knew her considered her one of those rare people around us -  An angel on Earth. She was also an artist as this blog attests to who dreamed of retiring and dedicating herself to painting. Sadly it was all robbed from her by Alzheimer’s. And now at least she is free of that.  She is a fixed star that I and my siblings guide our lives by and we’ve all missed her for some time now. To honor her, I could post so many different paintings that mom did, many of them quiet and beautiful, much like her. I've settled on this one that hangs in my office, above the door. I pass beneath it as I come an go. A watercolor, her media of choice from 1977 onward,  it speaks to me as an image of freedom, soaring into that gigantic sky. However, that tiny house, it seems so alone but resilient, lost and forgotten but sweet and kind, a refuge, safe, a symbol of home. All elements I would apply to my Mom. There was a day in the late 70's, maybe 80, that this image spoke to her enough that she would paint it. And now she speaks to me through it.  - love you mom. Jimmy.

the painting 

( click on to view larger )

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 love how she handled the grass in this one

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when mom got loose you could can tell she was enjoying painting.

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Her signature is her full Barbara Sisko Capobianco