Perspectives: Bernita Doiga

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The writer Maya Angelou once said, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” During the part of her life when she lived on Church Point Road in Gonzales, Bernita “Neno” Doiga (December 1, 1940—March 28, 2018) would appear to have done a bit of both. Bernita, or “Neno” as she was known to nearly everyone, learned to paint relatively late in life. But once she did, this gifted but largely untrained artist used painting to push back the boundaries of her world, by painting upon them that which she wished to see. The walls of her modest mobile home glow with intricate land- and waterscapes—some confined to canvases, others escaping the frame when the artist went straight for the walls. The interior surfaces of her home reflect murals and ceiling frescoes that transcend their suburban ordinariness in favor of a grander vision. Where most of us would see a simple set of closet doors, Neno chose floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a mountain lake or a walled garden dotted with birdhouses and overflowing with greenery. In the kitchen, rather than mass-produced paneling, Neno chose to have a cottage on a hillside—blue mountain peaks fading into the distance. Even in her utility room, an elaborately frescoed ceiling meant that every trip to retrieve a broom or mop took place beneath a cloud-strewn summer sky ringed by treetops, looking for all the world like it belongs on the ceiling of an Italian church, not a trailer home in Gonzales. 

But that, according to her son, Joe Miller, was kind of the point. “She was a very gifted artist, but she didn’t like any fanfare about it,” he said. “She just decorated the home so that everything flowed. If she liked a scene she’d paint it on canvas, then she would paint the room to go with what she had in the painting. But she never wanted any attention. She painted for about ten years, then one day she said, ‘OK, I’m done.’” 

Neno passed away this past March, and while Joe wonders what will become of the little mobile home and the work his Mom did to make it so much larger than life, he knows which of her paintings he loves the most. “It’s a scene of Cade’s Cove, Tennessee,” he said. “She went there once, and she loved it so much, she came straight home and painted it. Anyone who saw it—if they’d been there, they’d say straight out, ‘That’s Cade’s Cove, Tennessee!’ That’s how good it was.”  

This article originally appeared in our June 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.