Artist Statement

At twenty years of age I came to a foreign land. Set in the ways of my upbringing, blinded by stereotypes definitive of my - superior, as it seemed at the time - cultural identity, I felt utterly out of place. “Love it or leave it,” you say? I was trapped: I didn’t love it but I couldn’t go back. A rolling stone - strings of any connectedness snapped - I was lost to myself. For four years I existed in a limbo of self imposed isolation: I lived in the community of my expatriates, disliking its noisy crude provinciality. Refusing to learn the new language, I wrote volumes on perceived differences between two cultures.And then it all died. A merciful death. A death without mourning. Stripped naked - old ideas and preconceptions swept away as if by rushing floodwaters - I was left with nothing to sustain my old identity and the separateness rooted in it. Stripped naked of any reference point ever known to me, I was - in a sense - born anew into the world that was neither hostile nor welcoming but rather indifferent: it simply let me be. To be is to belong is to connect. I opened myself to the world around me. I wandered the narrow streets and alleys of the familiar neighborhood without judging, or comparing, or wishing to be thousands of miles away.  And discoveries awaited me on every corner... The dancing rhythms and geometrical patterns cast by the shadows of fire escapes on the brick walls… The depth of the blue sky reflected in the puddle of melting snow under my feet… The bare trees in the spring - squeezed into narrow spaces between the huts and shacks yet reaching upward to the sky … The sunlight coming through thick green foliage to illuminate square back yards of tiny two-story houses shaded by the elevated steel supports of metro… The thump of domino chips against weathered wooden picnic tables as men and women pass time on the boardwalk… A solitary figure under a big umbrella wandering in the rain on a deserted beach… As an observer and a witness, I was a part - a part of life in all the houses I had not lived in since my birth… a part of life spilled onto all the streets so different from those remembered and cherished since my childhood… And yet - the smell of lilac in the air… translucency of light at dusk… the melody of voices - children playing, women gossiping… my hands red in the wind - black leather gloves left on the train… the cooling softness of the raindrops on my face and on my palms turned upward… the yellow inviting warmth of windows at night - a faint resemblance of life once known so well and claimed… My past and present intertwined, existing simultaneously, enriching, complementing… A call to one another… A conversation…