ARTIST STATEMENT Holocaust Themes

My life, like my art, has been strongly influenced by my childhood experiences in the Nazi Holocaust. In 2002, I returned for the first time to the ghettos and camps of Eastern Europe. Throughout the trip, images of my lost famly kept creeping back into my consciousness, while childhood fears reemerged as scary nightmares. My entire being was shaking in horror, as I sobbed for the six million of my people who had so inhumanly and painfully perished. I felt a deep inner need to portray their suffering. I wanted to restore to them their dignity as Jews. Most of all, I wanted to honor and remember them. All the pieces in the series "In a Confined Silence" began as small black-and-white photographs. Some images were of my family, others were kindly donated by friends whose family members had died in the Shoah. Most were from archival photos in the public domain taken by Nazi or other photographers. Each image depicts a real Jew during the Holocaust. Much of the background imagery was also derived from Holocaust sources. Each photograph was enlarged during duplication on a Xerox copier. The toner from the Xeroxed copy was then transferred with solvents onto watercolor paper. The transfers were scanned into a computer and overlaid with multiple layers of color and texture; they were also combined and strengthened with elements of other Holocaust images.The finished pieces were printed with archival pigments on museum quality rag paper.