Twin Towers
Still loom
Two Houses. Two Painters. Two Parents. is a newsletter of stories about art, feminism, grief, and time excavated from the Soho loft where I grew up. Posts are free and illustrated with the work of my long-divorced parents, the painters Mimi Weisbord and Lennart Anderson. Sign up here:
I’m tired of writing about my parents. Tired of thinking about the deaths of my parents. Tired of being the daughter of my parents.
They died normal old-age deaths. They shed their bodies like old people do. I should be normal, too.
I could shake free of their canvas, ashes, and oil. Instead, I sift and shuffle them. Preserve, exploit, and drill the earth of them.
Shaping their story as I see fit.
I used to hang their paintings side by side and look forward to when they’d arrive. But on separate visits, they‘d walk through the door and head straight to find their work on the wall.
“Eye level!,” they’d lecture.
With rarely a glance at the work of the other.
This little 5 x 7-inch painting is by my mother, Mimi Weisbord. She painted it from the window of our apartment in Brooklyn, where she moved us after she left my father (the painter Lennart Anderson). I found it on a shelf in her Soho studio in 2021.
I think a lot about the obsessions that fuel art-making, as well as the — let’s face it —narcissism it requires. As a daughter of painters and as a mother and a partner who writes, I’m not at peace with any of it (perhaps, especially during these dark days). How about you? As always, your thoughts and comments are appreciated.
I'm one of those people who believes that one of the things we have to do in this moment is maintain...our joys, our values, the structures and practices that we know work regardless of what they say. And making art can fit into any or all of those things that need maintaining.
The metaphor of mired in the rubble of the city's two towers is pretty powerful. Thanks for sharing your creative process -- it's hard work and not always pleasant.