Last fall, I produced a legacy film about 96-year-old painter, Nathalie Engdahl, the mother of Jacksonville sculptor David Engdahl.

In an age of viral videos and tweets that travel around the world in seconds, I’m still surprised by emails like the one below from a woman who’d purchased one of Nathalie’s paintings to David Engdahl.

Here’s the email:

“In 1972, I purchased an oil painting, ‘In Wildness is the Preservation of the World’ done so beautifully by your mother, Nathalie. It had been part of a display of her work at Lebanon Valley College. I was taking a night course at the time, saw the painting, and had to have it. Oh! How I have cherished its beauty!  At the time, your mother wrote me 3 letters describing her technique, her new farm, Stillmeadow near York, and how nature gave her inspiration to paint.

My husband and I were painting our bedroom a few weeks ago. Since I had taken the painting down from above our bed, I decided it was time to attach those letters to the back of it so our 3 children would know about the artist.

Forty years have passed since I acquired the painting and I commented to my husband that Nathalie had probably died. Then I had an ingenious thought, ‘Why not Google her?’ Days ago I was thrilled to read about your 96-year-old mother and appreciated the video Natalie Halpern created.

I do hope your mother continues in good health and that if possible you could send her my message to you, to somehow thank her for her talent that has so warmed my heart over the years. My particular painting is of woods in Spring and reminds me of a walk we had taken as a family in 1971 in a state park in Maryland. I glimpsed a pileated woodpecker there for the first time in my life. The walk in that woods, on such a perfect day, is always relived when I see your mother’s work.”

Films bridge distances and time, building emotional connections with people we’ve never had the chance to meet or haven’t seen in decades. They bring to the surface feelings and defining moments in our lives.

Having a hand in that is a big source of inspiration.

 

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