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The Zayde Paintings...
    Exhibited at the Jewish Community Center in Ann Arbor in 2003


Fay Kleinman on the Zayde paintings

THE DRAWINGS OF JACOB KLEINMAN

1947-8

My father's voice was soft as music. I hear it now from a distance of 45 years. He and his granddaughter are telling each other stories as he draws on scraps of paper, backs of old envelopes, bits of wrapping paper, paper bags.

The family has saved all ear to take a two-week vacation in the Catskills. They leave the grey city for the magical world of trees and flowers.
In the country, the child is enchanted by the geese and ducks. The water pump is a source of wonder. Later, back home, the grandfather draws little animals, flowers, and a water pump in every picture. Their laughter rings out. He also puts an American flag in every drawing. He has come, years ago, from Russia, where the streets are paved with gold. Although he will work, day and night, all his life, he is happy to be here. All this, the country scenes, water pumps. geese, ducks, flowers, the flag, get mixed together in wondrous collage.

    Later, people will say the drawings remind them of Chagall or Klee, but my father has never heard of them.
1956

The years pass. The grandfather is no longer with us. The little girl will go to college, will marry, will have children of her own. We leave New York, my husband and I, and move to the Berkshires. There are boxes and boxes of stuff to be sorted. I come across my father's drawings, browning with age, shedding crumbs.


THE ZAYDE PAINTINGS OF FAY KLEINMAN

1965 on

I look at the drawings, remembering. One, of trains in a subway station, catches my eye. I think what a good painting this would make. At this time, I have been painting for about 35 years. This painting, and others to come, though I do not know it yet, will not be in my own style. The paintings will be a curious mixture. My father's primitive drawings will become paintings with the use of shapes and colors, by accident, instinct, and years of experience.

I begin to paint, using the drawing as a model. As I work, I am no longer conscious of the place or time. There is such an aura of other worldly happiness that it is hard to describe. It will be so every time I work with my father's drawings before me. As I continue to do the series, I will always have the feeling of overwhelming joy. I know I am holding the brush, but I am not conscious of painting. It is my hand, my father's voice.

The Zayde drawings and paintings are dedicated to Davida. Her Zayde called her Dvorala.   
                --Fay Kleinman, 1996