You'll Always Have Christmas Presents
You'll Always Have Christmas Presents
Jennifer Drinkwater. You’ll Always Have Christmas Presents, acrylic and tempera on wood panel, 23.25” H x 36” W, 2022.
You’ll Always Have Christmas Presents arrives wired and ready to hang. My genius husband Aaron Swanson carefully crafts each panel with high-quality wood, mounting a smooth plywood surface onto a sturdy, mitred wooden frame that provides depth and support to the painting. The sides of the panel are sanded and finished for smoothness.
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Twenty percent of profits support the Mississippi Christian Family Services, an organization “chartered for providing family services with special concern for the distressed, underprivileged, and developmentally disabled in Sharkey County. Membership is open to all who subscribe to the purpose of the organization. A local bi-racial Board of Directors directs the program and a local bi-racial Advisory Committee function in an advisory capacity.”
The community story that inspired You’ll Always Have Christmas Presents….
In early November 2019, I spent a lovely afternoon with Julia Rodgers Clark and Drick Rodgers, a father-daughter farming duo, on their family farm outside of Rolling Fork in Sharkey County, Mississippi. I loved on horses, rode in a cotton picker, peeked into Mont Helena, and listened to remarkable family stories and histories.
Years ago, I read that planting a tree is inherently an act of faith and optimism. Heck, gardening and farming are inherently acts of faith and optimism. Drick Rogers’s grandfather planted an orchard of pecan trees for Drick when he was a young man, informing him that “you’ll always have Christmas presents.” This lovely anecdote – the trees planted for Drick for him to gift the harvested pecans to his people – illustrates the inter-generational generosity and optimism found in communities across the Delta.
