Friday, March 19, 2010
In Memory...
Nell Kirkland Johnson, 1924 - 2010
Nell Johnson was one of those special people who you feel privileged to know, and who you never forget. I was on a different kind of vacation - for me at least - when I met her in New Orleans where we had both gone for a watercolor course. It must have been in the mid-80s. This was a lark for me, as I had no experience with watercolors beyond splashing some color on a few sketches now and then. Nell, on the other hand, was accomplished - made beautiful paintings, and made it look so easy. She was the star of the class. I came to find out later that she had been instrumental in starting the Georgia Watercolor Society, and had been its President for some years. She had a comfortable, beautiful home and studio full of her paintings in Tifton, Georgia, and she taught both adult and children’s classes there.
Nell was truly a Southern Lady, to the core. Impeccably but comfortably dressed, witty, warm, and with the abundance of the charm that just melts through the shell of the hardest Yankee curmudgeon. She dealt daily with crippling orthopedic problems, but without ever allowing them to interfere with her generous hospitality.
We remained only in tentative, infrequent contact over the years. But she found me on Facebook recently and we talked by phone maybe just a month or two ago, She was still charming and her voice was strong as she invited me to again visit her in Tifton. So it is with sadness that I received a card with a reproduction of a painting of hers on the front, and the following message dated March 13:
Leroy or Lee -
I’m Nell’s daughter and I know you have tried to contact her recently. It has taken me some time to go through her mail and I found your 2/11 note to her. The address was incorrect and so there was delay in getting it.
Mother died the evening of 2/14. I don’t know when you last talked with her, but her health had been an issue for the past few years and she really got worse, late Dec/early Jan. She’s been on O2 for almost 3 years because of probable lung cancer. The past 6 months she stayed in her apt at Maple Court in Tifton with full-time sitters and we got Hospice services stated just the week before she died.
Mather hasn’t really painted since moving to Maple Court in the fall of ’05. She did attempt to teach a small class of residents at Maple Court, but that was infrequent.
I know Mother found you on facebook, but not sure if she communicated with you or not.
- Buttons Johnson
Nell, I am glad in can hold you in my memory, but my world is diminished in your absence.
