“Touched by the Wind of Time and Dust of Memory,” Edna Kurtz Emmet, 2013, mono, 28″ x 22″
Emmet’s second contribution, done in monoprint on paper, “Touched by the Wind,” is at once personal and emblematic of the Jewish communal experience in the heart of the twentieth century, with its brutal stormy sweep of man-made winds. It is centered on old photographs of her parents, sister and herself—sepia, colorized, ghosted—around which swirl objects from the home in Warsaw, Poland. Along the bottom of the image is the destroyed city—the Nazis intended to raze it completely and to build the new capital of the Reich in that location—and colors, mainly yellow and red, with familiar symbolic significance, swath themselves across the image surface. Her family, like so many families, was touched by those winds, and too many of them swept up and away by them.
Edna Kurtz Emmet was born in Poland and grew up in Israel. Ms. Emmet received a BA in Art and Design from the Hornsey College of Art in London. For the next several years she traveled extensively, living in Japan and Greece. Subsequently, Ms. Emmet studied Waldorf art education principles at the Tobias School of Art in Sussex, England and explored the dynamic qualities of colors with the painter Beppe Assenza in Dornach Switzerland. Ms. Emmet resides in Baltimore, Maryland. She teaches painting to adults and children. She exhibits her work in the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, India and Israel, and her paintings can be found in numerous private collections. To learn more about Ms. Emmet, visit her website ednakurtzemmet.com and follow her on Instagram @1ekemmet.