Grandma Emilia Gebara Yoakim portrait is going to Australia with cousin Paola, after all she was Paola's grandma also and we both look like her a little...I painted two versions of it, the second one still in my studio unfinished.

I was painting this one when I had just recovered from cancer surgery and for a whole year was painting and repainting her face the would not match the 1930 black and white photo I had. Grandma was following my progress from where she is and kept sending me messages that she was not too happy with the results, it did not look exactly like her, till one day exasperated I told her I was doing the best with what I had!!!

( of course I told her this in my mind!)

I only had a very old photo where I could hardly see the lines of her nose!!!

She must have heard me because around that time, my cousin Sandy who lives in Australia sends me a message saying she wants to send me a photo of my grandma from the 1930's who belonged to my now deceased aunt Liliane who was her stepmother..Liliane died almost 20 years ago.

I welcomed that photo with pleasure and here is grandma Emilia looking fantastic with Liliane, Marguerite, and a group of people including Sandy's grandma who was her friend, all of them on a trip to Syria in the 1930's!

After that I could not tell grandma I could not see her face so she kept sending me more photos of her young, this time via Paola in Australia who also got a whole box of Liliane's photos who had been with Sandi's brother all these years!

Now I need to finish her second portrait, I have no more excuses.

I also own another portrait of grandma Emilia in my living room, this one was painted in Egypt in the 30's but cannot rely on it too much since it is another side of her face

One day, after all these efforts, I was walking in my living room, when I explicitly heard grandma's voice in my head and she said to me " I wanted you to have that portrait!" referring to the one from the 1930s that I inherited from my aunt in Egypt.

That message stunned me so much, it was the only time I heard such a message coming from another world.

For all of you who think I am losing it, try being in my place painting a dead grandma who wants her portrait done!

When she met me and I was 11 years old, after we landed in Lebanon after our 8 years in Italy, just before she passed, she said to me, so scared I would not love her looking old and sick, ""You know when I was young, I was a good looking woman!"

I looked at her surprised she could have such thoughts since I loved her anyway.

Now it is my turn to prove to her I really believed her!

Photo below, Grandma Emilia in Alexandria.