I completed a short series in 2019 based upon a book written in Polish by my great aunt, a member of the intelligentsia who survived the Nazi camps in WWII. One of only two books written about the war and the camps by a Polish female writer, I finally was able to have it professionally translated. To read about what she experienced, what truly happened to members of my family and to millions of others was shocking to my core and something I felt needed to be expressed in paint.

This was the first piece of the series - my aunt was able to make friends and lifelong comrades through their mutually-shared turmoil. One of the camps in which they were interned was a munitions factory where they toiled forging iron into the ammunition that would be used to kill their kin and countrymen. Somehow managing to find grace and beauty within her experience was the goal, and there were not many instances of this in real form yet only in their dreams and memories they would share among each other, including the smell of fresh flowers and the painting of Polish pisanki eggs.