Gene Derwood was around 44 in this photo taken at Macy's department store in New York City. My mother told me what a good deal it was pricewise for a professional looking photograph, and how people remarked at how young she looked. She was dead just a few years later of stomach cancer. She was always a heavy smoker, and could not stop though she knew it was bad for her health.

We see here her wonderfully sensitive mouth which does reflect my experinece of her fine and intelligent appreciation of not only literature but the arts, especially painting. Her eyes are both wide open and maybe almost frightened. She was indeed a frightened person, and spoke nothing but horror of her own childhood in which she was mistreated and sometimes brutalized.

Her high intelligence meant she could go to the library, instead of classes, and still get the highest marks. What my mother liked about this outfit was that she designed and did the sewing herself. She was a 'fashion queen' without having the money to pay for fashionable clothes. Her big decision was to carefully buy the fabric of good quality to make this outfit. She had 'salt and pepper' hair, which means black but with strands of gray throughout. She saw herself getting old but never wanted to.

For Gene Derwood, my mother, the ideal was always to be preferred. The quest for immortality as a painter and poet meant that the greatest beauty always and in everything was to be achieved. But lacking infinite resources Gene Derwood had mostly to concentrate on writing poetry and her art. Thus this portrait is significant in that she affirmed her own person as a woman of refined sensibility, even if in her dediciation she had to make her own clothes!