Daina Krumins' Notes:

 

Around 1950 Martins Krumins and his wife Mara, his brother Roberts and his sister-in-law Larisa (my father and mother), and I came to the United States. A few years later Martins purchased a property at Plymouth Lake in Sussex County, New Jersey. My family also purchased a property which was partially wetlands which has been sold to the Nature Conservancy. In the 1950's and 1960's we would spend weekends and vacations living in a cabin there and my father dug some ponds in the swamp which resulted in huge piles of peat moss which were used for gardening both at Lake Plymouth and our home in Westfield, New Jersey. This painting is of those piles of peat moss and the man in the painting is my father who posed for the painting.