Another St. Patrick’s Day, that celebration of all things Irish– parades, pints and more Kelly green than the mind can fully process. They say that well over 30 million Americans claim to have Irish roots.
Growing up, I always believed we did as well because my grandmother was an O’dell, which certainly seems Irish. But doing genealogy over the last decade I have discovered that the O’dell was changed through the years from Odell and before that from Odle and, most likely, before that from Woddell, It turns out that it was not Irish at all.
No, it was British. And for the Irish that is a big distinction.
But I also discovered that my father’s great-grandparents were Irish immigrants during the Great Migration of the middle of the 19th century. It was something I wasn’t sure of before I started my genealogy work. I still haven’t found where they originally came from in Ireland.
Icon: Mary T.
Their’s was a pretty stock story. The father, Michael Patrick Tobin, worked on building the railroads in central New York, ultimately settling in the Binghamton area, where most of his family worked for the next several decades in the tobacco industry there. Most were tobacco strippers or cigar makers.
I am not positive that his wife was actually born in Ireland. There are conflicting accounts but her parents definitely were. She was the subject of one of my Icon paintings from a couple of year’s back shown here on the right. Her story is an interesting one, one that I wrote about on this blog. You can read it by clicking here.
So, it turns out I am one of those 30-some million with a bit of Irish blood, about 25 % according to the DNA tests. I don’t give it much thought except on this particular day and even then, I realize that these folks were not much different than most of my other ancestors from other countries who left the hardships of their homelands for what they hoped would be a better life in America. I can’t say they all found wonderful lives but perhaps they were a bit better off than they might have been had they stayed put.
Okay, here a bit of Irish music for the day, a nice reel, The Glen Road to Carrick, from a contemporary Irish group, FullSet. I like the feel of this- it has a fresh edge that makes me want to drive too fast. By the way, the painting at the top is from a late Irish painter, Paul Henry, who painted primarily in the first half of the 20th century. I am a fan of his work and featured it here a couple of years back.
Have yourself a good day.
I thought I had put the Icon series on hold for a bit as I moved more heavily into the work for my upcoming shows in June and July. But the other day I just had an itch to jump quickly into one of the ancestors who remains prominent but a bit of a mystery for me. It was painted quickly without hardly any dawdling over it and by the time it was blocked out in the red oxide paint that I use for my underpainting it felt like it was coming to life.
I don’t know how to start with this newest painting from the Icon series. When I started the series I wanted it to focus on the lives and stories of the everyday ancestors that make up my and many others’ family lines. But there ares some folks in these lines that are definitely not everyday people. Such is the case with this icon– she was already the subject of multiple icons before I even thought of painting her.
For her works in spreading the beliefs of the church as well, in actually building churches, Anna was made a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church. In fact, one of the feast days of St. Anna is next week on February 10th.
One of the things I am trying to emphasize with this current Icon series is the fact that we are all flawed in some way, that we all have deficiencies and stumbles along the way. Yet, uncovering these faults in my research, I find myself holding affection for many of these ancestors that dot my family tree. Perhaps it is the simple fact that without them I would not be here or perhaps I see some of my own flaws in them.
He also introduces us to the word autotelic, taken from the book, 
My current Icon series has been a real pleasure for myself in that it’s refreshing to work on pieces that I realize are only for myself, not worrying if they strike a chord with anyone else. For me, it’s fulfilling to flesh out some of my ancestors and their stories, to give them an image that I an hold on to. As I’ve said these are meant as symbols– I’m not trying to recreate their actual appearance. In most cases, there is nothing to work with, nothing that would give me a clue as to how they might really look. So, this is how I see them in my mind.
Redtree Times 