Several years ago, I was looking at photographs in an online archive and was stopped by an image of a young girl that I found completely arresting. Upon further research, I realized that this girl’s life had ended in the Holocaust. There was no known name, no information; I was gutted by the realization that this one photo was the only documentation that she had ever existed. I knew immediately that I wanted to give something back to her—an alternative world that would illuminate the beauty and infinite potential of the life she didn’t get to have.
The through line of my work is narrative paintings told through the female lens. As a woman painting women I explore both the vulnerability and resilience that defines the female experience; reclaiming stories that patriarchal systems are structured to control and silence.
Using reference photos from European archives, I paint these girls and women into idyllic narratives beckoning the viewer to experience a story that didn’t get to unfold; to connect with a life that was so much more than a number. While depicting worlds of beauty and wonder, the paintings are a subversive reminder of the haunting parallels between the past and the troubling resurgence of authoritarianism today; confronting the past in order to forge a collective resolve to cultivate a world where compassion eclipses the darkness of intolerance. Authoritarian regimes survive by dehumanizing people into categories, enemies, numbers. Art does the opposite - it insists on the particular, the individual, the irreplaceable.

MIRJAM KALDERON

Mirjam Kalderon was born in Bitolj, Yugoslavia in 1929. Prior to WWII she lived in Bitolj, Yugoslavia.

Mirjam was murdered in the Holocaust.

RUTH TOBIAS

Berlijn, 11 December 1928 -
Sobibor, 23 July 1943
Reached the age of 14 years.

DAISY LOWOSITZOVÁ

Born 02.04.1930

Address/place of registration: Prague X, Přerovská 8
Transport Cv, no. 607 (06. 03. 1943, -> )
Transport Et, no. 1355 (23. 10. 1944, -> Auschwitz) Murdered

LILIANE PAULETTE BUSCHEL

BIRTH - 22 Apr 1932
Antwerp (Antwerpen), Belgium DEATH - 30 Sep 1943 (aged 11)
Auschwitz Concentration Camp

HANA JUNGOVA

Born 02.07.1929,
Prague
Transport Ck, nr. 339 (December 22, 1942, Prague -> Theresienstadt) Transport Er, no. 846 (10/16/1944, Theresienstadt -> Auschwitz) Murdered

FLOWER CROWN

The black and white image of this anonymous girl was taken by Henryk Ross in the Lodz Ghetto.

Ross risked his life taking photos that documented life there before the ghetto was liquidated and its residents were exrerminated in the death camps.

Emmy Stein

This portrait of Emmy Stein was commissioned by a school in the town of Seligenstadt, Germany that is named for her.

Despite her family’s efforts to flee the country, they were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp where Emmy was murdered on September 30, 1942. She was seven years old.