Dianna Braginton-Smith

TWO DAYS BEFORE DIANNA BRAGINTONSMITH’S OLDER SISTER WOULD HAVE

TURNED 59, Dianna received a phone call from Arts Foundation of Cape Cod (AFCC) Executive Director Julie Wake that connected the siblings like never before. Wake asked Dianna if she would be interested in submitting a piece to the AFCC’s Virtual Live Art Auction on August 6th as a tribute to her late sister and July when she jumped at Wake’s invitation and completed

Heather, the 1989 Pops by the Sea commemorative artist.

Heather’s painting is a whimsical scene; in the center is a boy, toes dipped in the water, playing the flute on the beach under an umbrella. In the foreground are six mermaids, depicting faces Pops painting. “It’s a different view of the same day, in my

of her family members, perched behind the base of a cliff. In the background are two ships sailing on the sea.

“The piece she created was done with so much love,” Dianna says. “Heather was so honored that they used her work to represent the event. I believe they had Julia Child conducting that year, and she got to meet her. I remember the height of her connects with Heather’s—is readily apparent. “She used an old this painting on her easel, it honestly felt like she was with me.

career was doing that painting.”

Fast forward eight years later, and Heather’s life and art were cut short when she died in a motor vehicle crash on Route 6 in March 1997.

Growing up, the two sisters were “one unit… she painted, I painted,” Dianna says, a talent the pair inherited from their mother, Dorothy.

doesn’t hesitate—“her spirit, her amazing spirit. She just had a fun-loving, compassionate, amazing spirit and a great energy to be around. It was a joy.”

That joy came rushing back to Dianna for several weeks in June a half-finished seascape on wooden panel that her sister had started before her death.

Dianna painted it in her Yarmouth Port studio on her sister’s old easel. The piece serves as an homage to Heather’s 1989 style,” Dianna says. The two sailboats in the original painting are back, under cloudy skies that open up over an orchestra performing on a half shell.

The contrast between the two paintings—where Dianna’s work classical varnish,” Dianna explains. “I didn’t varnish my side. If you look, you can see the shine of her section and the dullness of mine… Her painting is visible in my painting. It was very intentional.”

Twenty-three years after her sister passed, the project allowed Dianna to “bring my sister back to paint with me again… Doing When asked what she misses most about Heather, Dianna

“Sometimes it was too much, and it would wreck me and I had to let it go, which was very shocking because quite honestly I lost her a long, long time ago,” she continues. “It was never the awful crying. It was the getting to embrace her again and the joy of what it would be like to be reunited with her all these years.”

When Dianna parts with the work, she hopes the new owner will “feel the love and the gratitude I had for being given this opportunity to paint with my sister.”

On the back of the painting will be a note from Dianna explaining its significance. “Whoever buys it should never forget the original seed painting that was unfinished, like my sister’s life,” she says.