Mary’s Voice: Posthumously Speaking 23

Detail of “Flowers in Glass”

Flowers in Glass

By Mary Alice Condley
(1925-2007)

Editor’s Note: The day after Mary Alice’s niece Dawn Stella Burke found “Morning by the Sea,” while searching for a 1949 photograph of her parents, Don & Flo Elowee Story, Dawn Stella found two more of Mary Alice’s paintings, the first of which we’re sharing with you today.

Dreams of day and night

Photo by Vic Midyett

By Moristotle

The first is a dream of night, real as real:
    Siegfried has returned from having left us,
    from being gone away,
    his nubby hair stiff in short sprigs
    because it is weeks past his last grooming.
    It feels so real on my imagined finger tips,
    stroking him as he sleeps on top of our covers,
    himself as real as a character in a drama,
    as real as the person he had been for us:
    daily, nightly, always, forever.

Mary’s Voice: Posthumously Speaking 17

Detail

Back in the country

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor’s Note: I am grateful for the second time in a row to Mary’s & my niece Dawn Stella Story Burke, daughter of our sister Flo Elowee, for sharing two more paintings by Mary that Dawn acquired after Flo went into a nursing home. These show Mary again in her beloved countryside.]

Mary’s Voice: Posthumously Speaking 16

Detail

Still life

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor’s Note: I am grateful to Mary’s niece Dawn Stella Story Burke, only daughter of our sister Flo Elowee, for sharing these four still-life paintings by Mary, which Dawn inherited from Flo when her frailty required that she be moved to a nursing home. (Flo’s husband, William Don Story, had died the year before. I remember him well; he taught me as a young teenager how to drive, shave, & tie a double Windsor knot.) These still lifes are so peaceful and eternal, I feel that Mary must have been especially at home with the close-at-hand.]

Mary’s Voice: Posthumously Speaking 15

Detail of lighthouse painting

From field to shore

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor’s Note: I am grateful to Mary’s & my nephew Bruce Story, eldest offspring of our sister Flo Elowee, for sharing these three paintings by Mary. Her love of simple, traditional things sings sweetly through them.]

Mary’s Voice: Posthumously Speaking 12

(detail)

Mountain chapel

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago, my sister Mary’s daughter, Karen Abbey, came across a photograph of yet another of her mother’s paintings. “I think the picture is one of her best!” Karen reports the following note on the back of the photo:

Tuesday Voice: Posthumously Speaking 9

Hand tools

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Correction: The artist's granddaughter has informed us that her father doesn't think Mary did the shovel painting. (May 27)]

[Editor's Note: The artist's granddaughter Suzanne Dawn Condley recently brought to my attention that her father, my nephew Jeffrey Condley, Mary's second of two sons, has a number of his mother's paintings, several of which were done on hand tools – the first such paintings of hers that I was aware of.

Tuesday Voice: Posthumously Speaking 8

Detail

Homestead

By Mary Alice Condley (1925-2007)

[Editor's Note: The artist seems to have given this painting to her sister Flo Elowee Story for her birthday, for on the back, in Flo's calligraphic hand, is penned:

June 14, 1997
From DEAR Mary
My Sister

Thor's Day: If you're out there somewhere

Happy birthday, Mary Alice Condley

By Morris Dean

Today is my sister Mary Alice Condley's birthday. She would have been 89 (1925-2007). I am confident that almost everyone who knew Mary would agree with our sister Patsy's estimation of her as "the sweetest, kindest, most caring person [they] have ever known."