These paintings are based on family photographs, many taken in Williamstown, NJ during the 1950s. The underlying truth is so elusive you can’t see it even when you see it, so I’ve tried to discover it physically, with a paint brush, there behind the arranged expressions and automatic postures.

I’ll avoid the uber-popular terminology, it cheapens the evil. If you know you know.  

When they first come for you, you don’t understand why you’re being unfairly maligned and misdiagnosed and smeared. But then, if you’re very lucky, you do understand, only you still keep it to yourself because telling is almost impossible and much too dangerous and because you realize no one’s going to believe you. 

Baba, my Polish great-grandmother who emigrated from what’s now Latvia. She died when I was a child and I don’t really know anything about her. 

My grandparents’ wedding. That look has to be for her mother.  

Dolly and Virginia, sisters who fought for themselves and lost.

Nana’s second husband standing behind a rosebush, God knows why. 

My mom when she still had her swagger. 

Aunt Dolly, the smartest, wittiest sibling, already fenced in. 

My mother and brother.  

Nana and me, her captive. 

Me again, in overalls and a babushka, with a chicken. 

My brother and me and some background drama.  

Mickie and Chuck again. This is not a nice picture and it only got worse. 

Chuck in his golden era. 

My Mom the plant lady at the Philadelphia Flower Show. For whatever reason, she uniformly used her biological father’s surname as an adult, but when she died her mother used her stepfather’s name in her obituary because, hey – she was dead. 

Dolly in her blond era. 

Nana with Mr. D., her late-life companion. 

Me at the Gulf of Mexico a year or so before starting law school.  

Chuck, nature photographer.  

Nana and Shep in her Pennsylvania backyard. She won.

 

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