My painting is about the psychic wounds, just beneath the surface, that keep surfacing…forcing me to deal with my old feelings over and over again, even though I am far from being that little girl with a new daddy who was supposed to cherish me.

When we moved away from my beloved grandmother and grandfather to another city, I was an innocent child, a pretty one with curly red hair. My mother seemed to be away from our apartment frequently, and she left me in the care of daddy. He was sick a lot and had to stay home from work, lounging in his pajamas and robe. We were sitting in the living room one day, and he exposed himself to me! I had never seen a penis before, and still remember how ugly it was. He did not touch me, but this was the beginning of a lifetime of what I call harassment.

In my teens, I talked to my grandmother about this, and she said to just stay away from him.
It was difficult to stay away from him, since he constantly made sexual comments and gestures to me, saying that my mother was cold to him. Fortunately, I did not allow him to go further with me.

He continued to behave this way all of his life, making passes at almost every woman he knew,
including my daughter. When he was dying, she and I stayed overnight with him at the hospice. In his last moments he said he loved us, but he didn’t apologize.

As my daughter and I sat close together under a comforter in the lounge, we decided to forgive him.