Becky Margaret Mitchum |

About Becky

THEN: Born in the highlands of New Guinea, my family lived in a house on stilts in Papua.

MEMORY (Dirt Path) LANE: I enjoyed my mom's attention while my two older sisters were flown away to a boarding school in another part of New Guinea. Our mother was a wonderful artist; I remember watching her paint with watercolors the beautiful flora and fauna of New Guinea. Less inspiring but equally memorable were house chores she taught me to do (my phobia of cockroaches today comes from having had to help her empty the cans of kerosene in which all our bed posts stood to trap the critters that would otherwise have crawled up to join the sleeper in the night).

(You can view a slide show of New Guinea by clicking this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak9tnmvt0lo

This is a photograph of my mother holding my little toe-headed sister at a Sing-Sing in Kotna (Papua, New Guinea): you can see their pale skin amid the sea of bronzed natives and Birds of Paradise plumes in the tribal headdresses:

FAST FORWARD: Three additional siblings later, subtract a father from the equation and swap the house on stilts for a 2-story Colonial in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

My mom taught me to draw beside one of 10,000 lakes where sunbathers are perfect models, laying still on their towels for hours. [Nobody stands still in the winter long enough to draw and, even if they do, all you see is stuffing and eyes.] The extent of my art training was from my mom in the shade of an oak tree beside the roped-off swimming acre of a Minnesota lake. Summers spent like that made up for the bitter winters.

(You can view a slide show of the winter shores of Minnesota's Lake Superior by clicking here)

NOW: Only mothers of nobodies like reading their bios. Since mine is now in heaven, my bio wraps up like this: I love God, play violin, like to paint and write (especially for children), am married to my best friend, cherish everyone in my family, and own two dumpster dogs. All the rest is irrelevant. As M.C. Richards says, however: "poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance."

Welcome to my site. Enjoy!

(all professional photographs in this website were taken by Patrick Jones at www.studio-1-photo.com)