"The series .....is a very personal rendering of a family's history with a universal appeal."...

"The artist.... has managed to capture the emotional atmosphere of a first-generation American family, and its immigrant grandparents, with depth and honesty...

the montclair times | feb. 2001

Boro Park Reflections: Inspired by Grief, A Painterly Memorial

I grew up in a Brooklyn, New York tenement in place that was part urban American neighborhood and part Eastern European shtetl, called Boro Park.

I began this series of paintings in the summer of 1998, after the death of my mother. During the week of mourning, I spent hours poring over old family photos. I found myself drawn to a photograph of my parents that I had used many years before as an inspiration for a painting that I started but never completed. I eventually stopped painting altogether.

After not picking up a brush for twenty years, I found myself finally painting Avram and Mottel, A Love Story. I picked up exactly where I left off, as if the twenty year hiatus from painting had been an afternoon. I was inspired by grief to return to painting, and began this series of works, emotionally chronicling my family history.