After school I rode my skateboard to my grandmother’s house just about every day. She lived in the ‘city’ of Ashland, OH and I could hang out there, eat ice cream and cookies and watch TV till my parents got off work and picked me up and drove the 10 miles out in to the country to our home in Rowsburg, OH.

I spent a lot of time with grandma and spent the night at her house at least once a week. When I was a little kid, my parents took me in to her to give them a break. When I got older, I stayed there overnight to give me a break from them, lol. She is one of my very favorite people in the world and one of my bestest friends still to this day. She is one of the kindest and most patient people God ever created and has always seemed to understand me, tried to help me understand me and genuinely cared to know what was on my mind. I credit her as being one of my greatest positive influences because she was always trying to get me to draw something, paint something or even cook something or create anything really- for or with her every time I visited her back then.

She was a very good artist herself and she always had a lot of pet projects going on, not to mention we would always discuss whatever book she was reading when I visited and she got me interested in doing all sorts of fun things that currently occupy my time. I remember her buying me books on art and projects to do for my birthday and Christmas every year. I got all my art supplies from her as a kid it seems. I had so much paper and so many pencils, pastels, paints all the other artistic p-words I guess because of her.

She had a huge collection of books about art and science related subjects- things that definitely interested me when I was a boy. I used to go to my bedroom at her house and stay up late, late, late reading books about Picasso, Cezanne, Reubens, Van Gogh, Michelangelo, De Vinci, Monet, etc… as well as instructional books about painting and rendering and photography, popular mechanics magazines from the 50’s and 60’s and even the occasional National Geographic (with indigenous cleavage!). She even had me draw Zippy for her, and proudly sent off my drawing to those people, lol! I think she even got me a subscription to MAD Magazine for a while. She was a great inspiration and a very positive influence on me.

In fact, I think Ima have to go get some fresh toll paints and go paint some wooden eggs again with her soon. 🙂

(copyright Adam Pate, 2013)