This charcoal drawing is a study of my great grandfather, Louis Gilbert Pugsley, born 1898 and passed away several years before I was born. When we can’t make our own memories with family, they instead leave a legacy of stories and if we’re lucky, photographs. I’ve spent hours with my mom pouring over her carefully saved family pictures and artifacts, learning about whose home she spent summers in, who worked where, who dated who, the lives of those she loved. I learned a lot about great grandpa Pugsley, who had a busy life, working at orchards, as a cabbie, and even a painter. While these old photos are still and flat, often blurry or damaged, they come to life under my mother’s words.
A small photograph of great grandpa Pugsley has always caught my eye, a quiet snapshot of him quietly eating breakfast as the sunrise catches the trees outside the cabin. Someone found it important enough to cherish, to save, to pass down to me with his name written in soft cursive on the back. By reconstructing this photo and expanding it with the stark ash of charcoal, I’ve connected our lives, creating a window to the past. He may not have known me, but I know how the flowers bloomed by his cup, how the shadows danced over his hands, his heart.
