kirshenblatt

THE MUSEUM OF FAMILY HISTORY

Paint What You Remember

THE MEMORIES OF MAYER KIRSHENBLATT

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and her father Mayer Kirshenblatt.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett with her father Mayer Kirshenblatt,
who grew up in Apt (Opatów), Poland,
subsequently immigrating to Canada
in 1934 at the age of seventeen.

Mayer Kirshenblatt z"l, 1916-2009.
We celebrate a life lived long and well, even as we mourn his passing.

"I started painting in 1990, when I was seventy-three years old, at the urging of my daughter and my wife. They kept cracking the whip. My daughter would say, "My daddy can do anything." She is a folklorist, an anthropologist, and she would beg me:

"Would you please, please paint what you remember?"

"I consider myself a storehouse of memories. My project is to paint prewar life in a small Jewish town in Poland. That's what really interests me. The way I paint is important, of course, but the most important thing is to get a subject. I have to get a subject. I think about it...I remember. It just comes to me....The subjects I decide to paint are those that have a story to tell....I paint these scenes as I remember them as a child...."

enter