Continuum is my journey from Holocaust to Art of the Heart – Love and Peace **click links to view galleries
The artwork that is included in CONTINUUM is varied in medium, style, and emotive expression. All of it is directly derived from my experiences of being a child of survivors of the Jewish Holocaust. This compilation of work has been done over the last 35 years. There is no one theme. I look back to the unspeakable fear, horror, and loss of the Shoah. I commemorate the innocent dead and the broken living. I look forward with love and hope. I offer prayer and gratitude. After all, there are two sides to my understanding of the existential question of the past and the future: the crime of genocide born of hate and the purpose of our higher existence born from love. Some work was composed during purposeful instantaneity. Some work was composed in commemoration, or as illustration.
I once had a conversation with a Rabbi, himself a survivor. I showed him one of the pieces which was done from a vision that came to me after visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. It took me 8 years to complete the painting and every time I looked at it I cried. It haunted me. The Rabbi had no words of wisdom about the vision but he told me that, clearly, my mode of expression was in the visual arts. It was a few years after my visit with the Rabbi that I happened upon an article about some of the shared experiences that people had while standing on the killing fields of the various concentration camps. As I read that some heard the screams of the murdered I realized that my own experience was, in fact, that reality which is of another dimension. In that moment I heard, not screaming, but the murmurings of prayer and the hushed tones of the millions. Whereas I had always had the feeling that they were around me, this was the first time that I heard and saw them. The dead have surrounded me my whole life. I will remember them.
But remembering will not bring them back, or prevent another holocaust. The continuum of the body of this work is reflective as a microcosm of the mandate of the Jewish people: to be a light amongst the nations- to project unity, love, and peace.
To this end the viewer can reflect on the impact of hatred on the individual, the collective, and the following generations, as well as the possibilities that love can bring forth.