Life moves quickly and painting enables me to slow down and hold onto my most precious moments and make them last. Drawing inspiration from personal photos, I channel my deepest memories and feelings into my artwork. My paintings are autobiographical in nature and they reveal much about who and what I value.
“Growing Up Jewish – Art & Storytelling” is a series of contemporary artworks I created to tell my family’s Jewish story and perhaps shine a fresh new light on what American Judaic art could look like. I spent many hours digging up and studying old family photos. Creating these paintings and writing the accompanying narratives required a fair amount of introspection and a lot of empathy. Through this series I reflect on the intoxicating lure of American-style freedom and the cost of trading in tradition for assimilation; I honor my relatives, the Holocaust survivors who had numbers tattooed on their arms and wore flower-printed sundresses, socks and sandals. I warmly recall summers spent at Jewish overnight camp. I look at the Jewish traditions we altered and the ones we kept. I re-create the holiday celebrations we observed – remembering cooking smells from Rosh Hashana meals and the sounds of singing around Passover tables.
“Growing Up Jewish – Art & Storytelling” provides a visual observation and an honest account of how a religion and culture was transmitted through five generations of one family.
