In my life my mom was both my mother and a child too – always learning, helping, and admiring other women herself – though almost always from women who were physically closer to her than her own mother. Just this past month the greatest figure that I saw in my mom’s life passed away, Stella Trafford. Stella was the grande dame of Boston parks – a torch my mom tirelessly carries on. Polly Thayer Starr first came into my life when I was about 12 I think – though I never actually met her she was a dear friend of Stella’s, who knew everyone in the community. When I first learned of her she was a blind, elderly artist who was moving into a nursing home. My mother and Stella went to her house and were given items of Polly’s that they liked – at the time my walls were covered in suns masks so my mother chose for me a baby blanket with a tufted sun pattern on its satin.
As years went on and I helped my mom with an annual auction in Boston I was exposed to Polly’s actual artworks, like the one above, that were being auctioned and sold by the Vose Gallery in Boston, which is run by an amazing family, the daughter of which used to babysit for me.
I became more and more aware of her talents and her story as I was in college trying to master simple concepts of depth and color choice in painting and drawing classes myself. Her ethereal touch, as shown in the gladiola below is something I could never dream to replicate.
As I read more information on her life today I realize that as she went blind, something that brings pain to the face of those who know her, she received a jeweler’s loupe, which opened her world to doing these amazing studies of local flora and fauna.
The painting above makes me think that Polly herself would be happy there on that porch in West Chop, Martha’s Vineyard. Below a self portrait.
Maybe I need to find my loupe too.
Tags: 2D, Boston, drawing, landscape, local, portrait
Suellen Growe
Polly was My fairy Godmother….from a child , growing up in Hingham, mass, where her family summered.
She cared fro me through the years and upon her death, at her memorial, I realized I was just obe of many God children that she lovingly cared for..