This acrylic painting on canvas draws inspiration from the enduring friendship of Rosie Leiberman and her friend. While living in Brooklyn, one day Rosie’s mother came and “I met the other women from Belgium, and she has a daughter. It would be nice for you if you were friends. She is coming tonight to see you.” Rosie describes when the “pretty teenager” arrived the first thing you asked when you were from Europe at the time was where you were hidden, in case you were hidden in the same place.
The teenager said, “I was in a convent”
Rosie: “oh me too. Which one?”
The teenager: “Longle”
Rosie: “me too Longle. Wait a minute what was your false name when we were hiding?”
The teenager: “Wait a minute you saved my life.”
Rosie: “What do you mean?!”
The teenager: “Remember I fainted and you told the people not to walk over me and you took me to the bedroom and you stayed with me”
Rosie then looked into her eyes (the only thing that remained the same) and instantly recognized her. From there Rosie explained, “And then we went on double dates together, bridesmaids for weddings, we got married the same year, had kids the same time, and we always lived close by. I moved to the bronx, she moved to the bronx. We would casually meet in the park, we were always together.”
In creating this painting, I aimed to capture the profound moment of recognition between two older women, depicting them realistically to anchor the narrative in their shared experiences. However, I represented their younger selves more abstractly—fading them into the canvas, symbolizing the fleeting and elusive nature of memory. I then blurred the edges of the figures with the background elements, alluding to the often indistinct and hazy borders of our recollections. I chose to focus on specific details, such as feet and hands, to guide the viewer’s gaze and highlight how some memories remain vivid while others fade into the background. I used a palette of soft blues and beiges to create a sense of distance and fading, akin to the way memories can dim and become less specific over time. These subdued colors do not dominate but instead create an airy, ethereal quality—a memory gently floating in the mind’s landscape.
Here I wanted the drafting process and brushwork to be obvious and somewhat unfinished, aiming to represent the fragmentary nature of memory and give the impression that the images are emerging from the fog of recollection. By integrating a real photo of Rosie and her friend, I sought to add a layer of authenticity to the composition, grounding the narrative in true events.
On the left, rendered in crayon, is the Longle convent, adding a vivid and textured detail that ties back to their shared history and the precise location that first connected their lives.
