Ice Cream Dreams at St Fausten

​Ice Cream Dreams at St Fausten
Oil on Canvas 36x48
Painted: 2022
Original Image Taken: 1953
 
My parents, grandparents and extended family immigrated to Montreal after the Holocaust and rebuilt their lives with nothing but gratitude for the city, its Jewish community and Canada, the country that took them in and enabled them to start over, live in peace and security and to build a new life characterized by possibility and prosperity for themselves and generations after them, including myself and my children.  This painting is inspired by a photo from the early 1950’s.  My mom (still embarrassed that she was photographed wearing curlers in public) is with her brother and parents on vacation in ‘the country’ (as they call it in Quebec). After the horrors they had escaped only a few years earlier, I love how relaxed they all look, doing something so ordinary, like getting ice cream at the corner store.  The symbolism of the Coca-Cola signage was not lost on me as I worked on this (Coke is a brand I associate with freedom).  I truly appreciate how my family has lived in two countries (both Canada and the United States) where we are all guaranteed the right to either engage – or not engage- with our respective religions.