A Crab With Dementia

How do you paint a plastic crab with dementia? That's the problem I am experiencing as I start using the objects in my new painting 'Forget-Me-Nots' . 
The picture is about my grandmother and her four sisters in old age and I collected a group of objects to be placed inside the silhouette of each person to represent them.
I am using the objects, all collected from five sea-side towns which I identify with the sisters, to try to convey memories of their lives..
Only sometimes, through memory loss and dementia, one can't always remember what the link with the object was.
How do I convey this in paint? I am trying a few different ways of doing it. The painting will be on my website soon, so you will  be able to judge if I am being successful.   

As Seen On T.V.

To advertise the reopening of Ted Coney's Family Portraits this weekend, I've just had Cambridge TV here to do some filming for a news item.
I was interviewed  in my studio and then they filmed me  painting, opening the advent painting (Limners) and manipulating Muffin the Mule (don't ask).
I did explain at the beginning that I was feeling anxious/excited, as we were awaiting news of the immanent arrival of our next grandchild.
Halfway through the interview the phone rang and I nearly fell off the chair. It was only someone for Hazel but could have been a tricky moment.

Meeting Miss Dupont

We were at the Royal Academy this week and I visited an exhibition of Anthony Green's work entitled 'The Life and Death of Miss Dupont'.
Anthony Green also paints stories about his family, the only difference being, he is an internationally famous artist and an R.A.!
I have met Anthony on several occasions over the years and we once attended one of his parties at his home in Cambridgeshire.
 I remember there was so many people there that I ended up sitting on a bed with about twenty other guests and next to me was Anthony's formidable mother. The Miss Dupont in the painting. 

Magic and Mayhem

Last week I had my lovely grandchildren to stay, to help celebrate my birthday. After a splendid meal we did a Sooty's Magic Show to the grown-ups. It got a bit out of hand, with Sooty and Sweep bashing each other, but we managed to make most of the tricks work.
I'd kept all the puppets from when I produced a two canvas painting entitled ' Duet ' many years ago.
The first canvas showed a conjurer making  objects disappear (my mother had hired a magician to perform at her 70th birthday party) which I used to demonstrate that my parents were going to move, after living all their lives in the same city.
In the second canvas I portrayed Sooty, Sweep and Soo as my parents and  eldest brother, whom they were moving to be near. I felt they had the same tense relationship as Sooty's manipulators, Harry and Marjorie Corbett and their son Matthew.
Strangely enough, they also lived in the same area of North Yorkshire.