Fountiene Lee Duda

• Bio
• Artwork

Bio
I did not grow up knowing my mother to be an artist. She was a mother to me and to my younger brother. She was a devoted wife to my father, often preparing an extra meal for him when he came home late from evening meetings.

My mother was born and raised in Clarinda, Iowa in the early 1900s. The youngest of four girls, she was very bright and was accelerated in school…skipping grades and graduating from high school at age 15. She was out working to support herself while others her age were still in high school. As she was an excellent typist and could take shorthand, her skills drew her to a job as an executive secretary. When she wasn’t working, she pursued her love of dancing and performing. She was invited to become one of the Radio City Rockettes but chose instead to marry my father in the midst of the Great Depression.

I knew my mother as an avid reader, instilling in me the love of books and the learning and pleasure that come with that passion. She belonged to book clubs and collected the classics, including Shakespeare’s work. She always seemed to continue learning and to be striving for a level of education, which had not been naturally available to her after she completed high school. Her love of animals and her reverence for nature are gifts that I now see passed on to my grandchildren. She loved flowers and would rather garden than keep house. She also loved antiques and though she had little money to spend on luxuries, she collected small pieces of furniture and china, which her children and grandchildren treasure today. She had a wonderful sense of humor and could always laugh at herself.

I remember the first art class she took. I was in high school when she enrolled in an adult education evening class. She came home excited from her first experience and yet embarrassed to show us her first drawings. They were of a live nude model.

As my mother continued her art classes, drawing soon became painting and she grew to love painting with oils most of all. Art became a wonderful outlet for her as my brother and I grew up and left home for college. Her first paintings were copies of pictures or works of known artists whom she admired. She usually added her own details to them. Later, she painted at the site of a scene whenever possible, often the mountains, the country or the beach. She would also take pictures of a scene she loved and bring it home to paint. Favorite subjects, which inspired her work, were barns, covered bridges and old houses. She studied anatomy and produced some lovely pictures of animals in their natural setting. I am sure that some of the happiest moments of my mother’s life were when she was painting.

When my mother was 60 her oldest sister died. She had developed symptoms that at that time (1967) were diagnosed as pre-senile dementia. Six years later the second sister passed away after developing the same symptoms. My mother’s third sister committed suicide on learning of her sister’s death and my mother went into a deep depression. We struggled to help her and could not believe that she, too, would develop the illness that had taken her sisters. She became uninhibited, making out-of-character comments, became incontinent and disoriented to time. An extensive medical exam yielded several possible diagnoses, which included Alzheimer’s, Picks Disease, and Huntington’s chorea. We were told that only an autopsy would confirm a diagnosis. My mother’s decline into severe dementia lasted almost seven years. In the early stages of her illness she continued to paint, but as the illness progressed, figures became distorted and were a saddening evidence of her loss of reality. She died in 1979 at the age of 72. An autopsy performed at the time of her death showed her to be a victim of Picks Disease. Each of my aunts who died of this illness had one child. Both of these grown children have succumbed to the illness.

William James once wrote: “The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.” My mother followed this guideline in so many ways. Her art not only “outlasts” her, it allows those who loved her to remember her vibrancy and her love of life more than the illness which took her from us.

As a family so impacted by this illness, we are very grateful for the continuing research to help us understand the causes and possible preventive treatment for future generations.

~ Fountiene Prince, Daughter

Artwork

To view a larger version of one of the pieces, please click on the thumbnail image of it.

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