For a 1971 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal , my family was asked to pose for a Thanksgiving photo shoot re-creating my grandfather’s painting Freedom From Want . We had to sit for hours at a dining table at the local inn, staring at food we weren’t supposed to eat. My mother later told me that the food was treated with something inedible to make it look shiny. We left hungry and exhausted. I was two years old.

My mother, a painter herself, often liked to point out that there was hardly any food on the table in the original painting either. This was a design trick, she explained, her tone half derisive, half admiring. The white tablecloth filling the bottom half of the frame keeps the focus on the smiling faces around the table. The only food item—besides some celery and pickles, a coupl

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