Bill Dean
The Ledger
May 1993
The woman trotted down Lake Morton Drive with her prize: a large, framed — and no doubt heavy — abstract print called "Birmingham Study, No.16."
The outward appearance was that of just one more art purchase during a breezy Saturday morning at Mayfaire by-the-Lake, Lakeland's annual arts festival held on Mother's Day weekend.
But appearances — like artwork — can be deceiving.
"Isn't it pretty?" asked the woman, Nancy Raulerson-Simmonds, a mental health therapist at Watson Clinic in Lakeland.
She paused just long enough in the street to adjust her grip. " I'm going to put it in my office," she said.
I don't have any of his work, but I have some from several other artists," she said.
Before she walked away with the colorful print, Raulerson-Simmonds had told the artist her story:
She had hosted a small arts-and-crafts show in her Lakeland backyard about 20 years ago, drawing about 15 artisans and 300 people.
Her art show would attract the attention of Muffy Davidson, a Polk Museum of Art board member who asked Raulerson-Simmonds' advice while organizing the museum's new arts festival planned in front of the Lakeland Public Library in 1974.
I would be called Mayfaire-by-the-Lake and also draw a small crowd.
And as the first Mayfaire, it was small enough to be contained on the library's relatively tiny lawn — in marked contrast to the 19th affair that wrapped two-thirds around Lake Morton on Saturday.
"And I said, 'Look how it's grown,'" said the artist, Geoffrey Lardiere, who recounted the woman's story after she drove away with her husband, daughter and latest Mayfaire purchase.
The Tallahassee-based artist, however, didn't have time to tell the woman his story: the significance of "Birmingham Study No. 16."
"My daughter had had open-heart surgery in Birmingham, and she died," Lardiere said, stepping out of his Mayfaire tent and into the calm breeze bathing the street and its passers-by.
His daughter's name was Gia, and she suffered from a congenital heart disease before dying five years ago at age 10. He was 37 at the time. Over the years, he coped with the tragedy by painting a series of abstract oil pastels titled "Birmingham Study."
The individual pieces were numbered in the order that he completed them.
Raulerson-Simmonds had bought No. 16.
"When my daughter was alive, painting was my way of dealing with it," Lardiere said about her illness. "And then when she died, it was my way of remembering her."
Lardiere said his art-show customers often compliment his use of bright colors and interpret him as a "happy artist."
Some even wonder — after hearing his story — why his works aren't darker, or even depressing.
"I don't think art should be dark and depressing," he said. That is especially true if the art is to evoke memories of the way he prefers to remember his daughter: as a happy girl, innocent and lively, carefree and precious.
"I paint the way I want to paint," he said.
"And there's a story behind all the works."
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