Art and Love

Five of the artworks I rehung yesterday (see this post) are by a California artist named George DeGroat. He was my mother's lover in the 1970s. Or she was his lover. Or they were lovers. My mother is dead so I can't get any clarification on the point.

My father divorced my mother in 1960. He threatened to name the local congressman as a co-respondent if she didn't agree to the divorce. She never remarried.

I know of only three men she dated. Once, and only once, I saw her kiss someone not my father. It was in the kitchen of our house in the San Fernando Valley. I had gotten out of bed to get some water and surprised my mother and her date as they embraced.

As a child, I always wanted my mother to remarry, but she repeatedly told me that it wasn't going to happen.

For a time, she dated a guy who was the head of security for the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. One winter my mother, my brother and I were invited up to Yosemite to stay with him. That must have been something serious. I remember thinking it would be fun to have the guy as a step dad. He told stories about climbing Yosemite Falls in the winter to blow up ice buildup to prevent avalanches. In the fall, he led the roundup of the park's wild horses so that they could be fed during the winter.

After I moved out, she dated DeGroat. I never met him. The only evidence of his existence was the artwork he left behind. My mother was obviously proud to say she was his lover. And it was, according to her, really good, too.

I was in my early 20s at the time. I was in the Navy, world wise, a gal in every port (when I had enough money to buy their services). But the image of my mother as a lover was, well, disturbing.

My mother was quite frank. Shockingly frank at times. In fact, I often felt she liked talking about here relationship with DeGroat just to make me uneasy.

The DeGroat prints have become family heirlooms. The image below is a pencil sketch he used as the cover of a card he sent to collectors of his work.



I remember finding it rolled up in a drawer in my mother's Culver City apartment. My mother wasn't the best caretaker of the art left to her. The bullfighter in the picture at the top of this blog and the "Triumbirate" print below suffered discoloration from years of exposure to my mother's serious tobacco habit.


It's nice to have the paintings back on the walls. The remodeling is now officially over.