My mother was one of a kind. Her obituary needed to be as unique as she was.
On May 12, 2021, Jean Pilk, who gave life to the concept of the Cool Mom, died peacefully at her home, surrounded by her adoring family, in Palmyra, VA.
At 4’10 inches tall and a whopping 79 pounds fully dressed, she was much like Dr. Who’s Tardis - inside the tiny container was a world of wonder and contradiction.
Born in Kansas City in 1924 (thank God she’s dead, she’d kill us for announcing her age), her mid-western roots stuck with her for her lifetime. She was impossibly sophisticated; her clothes were of the latest fashion and tailored perfectly to her tiny frame. Her shoes were Ferragamo and Chanel for dress and leopard print Chuck Taylor’s for her walkabouts. She read The Wall Street Journal and Vogue with equal enthusiasm, tore through mystery novels with the intensity of her favorite literary gumshoes and collected coffee table art books obsessively. She liked plain food, fancy clothes, and juicy gossip in equal measure.
Jean received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, but her real education began at the Art Students League where she studied portraiture with her mentor Herbert Abrams. Though she declared herself an artist at the age of 5, capturing images of anyone who would sit for her, her time at the ASL secured her resolve to make art her life’s work.
After art school, Jean married into the military at a ceremony at the United States Military Academy and began to work on her second passion — producing children of extraordinary talent, keen intelligence, diverse accomplishments, and questionable life choices. She would tell anyone who would listen “I had five children so I was assured there would always be someone around to take care of me.” Little did she know then how well her plan would serve her.
Her career got off to a slow start. In between babies, Jean taught drafting to high school students, and had a thriving career doing illustrations for retail advertising. Her renderings were in demand because her turnaround time to produce the images was twice as fast and of demonstrably higher quality than her competitors, most of whom were men. Jean often used her initials when working on these jobs, obscuring the fact that the work came from a woman. This made getting and keeping the jobs less fraught and awkward. More than one pink slip was issued upon her employers finding out that a mere housewife was producing their illustrations.
While she never stopped drawing and painting people, her portrait career began to gain momentum shortly after her last child was born and her husband was on a year-long deployment to Vietnam. She set up her studio in the kitchen and went to work at first turning out small portraits of children, then slowly building her client base to include a variety of subjects. In between commissions, she painted discreet nude figure studies with her middle daughter as muse. These studies were sold at a tony Georgetown art gallery in Washington, DC. From that point, it was, as Jean used to say, off to the races.
It was in DC that Jean began her lauded career as a well-known and in-demand artist of official portraits for women and men at the highest levels of government. Her favorite subject during that time was General Colin Powell, whom she considered a man of extraordinary warmth and character. Other luminaries in her portfolio were Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, Astronaut Michael Collins, Representative John Dingell, past Governors from Virginia, South Carolina, and Maine. Jean was the only artist to have a wing of her work hanging in the Pentagon, where she painted 12 former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Her work hangs there to this day. Jean’s portraits also hang in the halls of Congress, in statehouses, in museums and in private collections around the world.
With an unrelenting work ethic, her production was prodigious. She painted until she was 95, stopping only when her eyesight began to fail, and she could no longer mix her distinct — and top secret — color palate.
Though she traveled the world and lived both in the United States and abroad, the three places she loved most were her beloved mid-west where she established her roots, Cape Elizabeth, ME, where she thrived with her children nearby, and in Palmyra, VA, a community that embraced her in her final years.
Jean is survived by her proudest accomplishment — her five children who throughout their peripatetic lives formed a small but fierce band of eccentrics who marched to a drummer only they could hear. Roberta MacDonald, the oldest, is a business leader, a witch (the good kind) and a friend to anyone in need. Frank Pilk is an economist, a teacher and perhaps the only one of Jean’s children who will make the cut at the pearly gates. Candace Pilk Karu is a writer, a designer and let’s not forget her tenure as a nude artist’s model. Stephanie Pilk is a floral designer, a retail designer and has a wit that can cut core 10 steel. Jack Pilk can build anything fix anything and as a man of few words, is unlikely to speak to you unless you are on fire.
Jean is also survived by nine grandchildren, five great grandchildren and a gaggle of attached spouses, exes and hangers on, all of whom loved Jean passionately.
In Jean’s memory, please stop and smell the flowers, hold your loved ones close and be kind to strangers.
