I think I may have mentioned my grandma before, she was a force of nature. Since I moved into this new home, she's more present than ever, something tells me she would have loved it here. Maybe it is the atrium in the heart of the house that she would have filled up with giant geraniums or the fact that there are a lot of yellow hues. She used to say "Yellow is the colour of crazy people" and golden gems like that aside, she taught me so many things, so many important things, that I am still working most of them out 20 years later.

This painting is her, how I remember her. The Picasso it is based on was her favourite calendar page that hung in her kitchen no matter the month, year after year.

The duality in her face is a nod to that old chestnut about "eyes in the back of every woman's head" and in her case, also her uncanny ability to see a person throughout.

The Gernika bull head in her skirt, because that's where she lived for many years. The blood tear to a horse in her heart is the horror of the Spanish civil war that scarred her bones, not that she would have ever admitted to it. The many hats she had to wear, the red lips and nails to her last breath, her magic silver hair, so full of fire and her eyes, golden, for she had seen beyond.

"Indarra adeitasuna bidez" is the last thing she ever said to me knowing I was about to run away to never meet again.

"Strength through Kindness"