Painting My Mother’s Dress: Love, Time, and Memory
- Brianne Moore
- Mar 13
- 3 min read
Some paintings take hours.
Some take years to even begin.
In this video, I’m painting the dress in my mother’s portrait. You won’t see dramatic progress, but you will see the time, care, and quiet love that lives inside the work.
This piece is part of a series born from grief, healing, and the women who shaped who I am.
What you’re seeing here is a small moment inside a much larger story.
In October of 2020, my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. That moment in time shattered my world.
Not COVID, as traumatizing and devastating as that was. Not the challenges before that day: my husband losing his job and my salon business being shut down during quarantine, which meant I brought in no income either. That strain weighed heavily on our family.
It was the idea that this magical person who birthed me, who protected me the best way she knew how, the person who has been my biggest cheerleader my entire life, was now getting ready to fight for her own life.
That is what fueled this series.
I didn’t start until four years later, after I had time to mourn my old life expectations, to begin healing, and finally felt ready to tell my why in a way that spoke through what I poured into my gift.
My whole life I’ve been surrounded by strong women. To be honest, the men in my life were not what you would call strong male role models. All I really had were women and girls to observe. That’s what made me Bri.
As the only child, I like to think that put me in a very unique position to be molded by both the good and the not-so-good things I witnessed. It gave me a direct line of shared experience that shaped how I view the world. I was always the fly on the wall lol. Watching and making mental notes that I carried throughout life.
My mom, who was my first example , who loved her circle as hard as she could and was often unfairly disregarded by those same people. She is my hero. My grandmother, who was a caregiver from an early age to her mother and every child, grandchild and great grandchild for almost the entirety of her 87 years. She’s still shaking and moving like nobodies business.
To the aunt in Chicago that I’d see every summer, who was the life force for her entire family and the neighborhood. I miss her so much.
To the friend who, when I needed somewhere to go to mentally and emotionally escape one of the most challenging periods of my life, kept her door open to me.
There are so many stories of women who have been a safe space for me, who’ve been an example in some way on how to be.
That’s what this series is about.
Now, the video is long , you can speed it up a bit, but I wanted to give you a glimpse into the love and the time I put into this piece… and into all of these pieces.
This body of work is definitely in a different lane than what I usually create. A new lane.
I’ve loved the journey. I appreciate the memories and the deep internal work this process allowed me. I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
Y
If you would like to sit with me and watch just a small portion of that journey, I’d love the company.
Continue exploring the series.
Comments