jill poyourow

The Altadena Ancestral Cabbages

I was living in the sweetest little 1916 craftsman bungalow just off Fair Oaks Avenue in Altadena, California when I painted the Ancestral Cabbages. It was our first rental in the LA area after my graduation from Calarts.

In Altadena, my then-husband (a former farmer) tended a very lush and fertile backyard garden, a labor of love for him. But for me, I saw these heads coming out of the earth as somehow embodying the energy of the Eastern European ancestors whom I had never known but wondered about. I was familiar with images dating back to the old country of some of these blood relatives, thanks to the invention of photography preceding/coinciding with their wave of immigration. In previous works I thought a lot about theories of ancestor worship in different cultures throughout history. Cabbage Patch dolls were popular at the time and part of my niece’s collection of toys. This was also the time in my life when I began trying to begin a family of my own, and was suffering miscarriages. If I had been a wife and mother in the old country, I would have most likely had seven children, like the seven cabbages in the series. Somehow the idea that my ancestors’ souls were co-mingling with my not born childrens’ souls, as I dug in the garden behind my house, provided me comfort and some sense of meaning while I painted from life these portraits of a staple food of my ancestors.