#8 Helpful Hints in Troubled Waters - Art as Healing

Nika in her Sedona, Arizona Studio

When I arrived in the USA in 1946 after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust and the brutality of war I would have been depressed and a wreck of a person. However, I got married very quickly, had two children and didn’t take a moment to really reflect on who I was now.

Luckily, during our summer vacation in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, a small village of fisherman and artists on Cape Cod, I found a school for painting, an art form which I never had done before, and something in me responded to the great master Xavier Gonzales.  He asked me if I need to make a living.  I answered, “No, I am a kept woman; I’m married.”  “In that case,” he said, “why don’t you paint?”

That moment changed my life.  I was able to function as a mother and wife in this strange new land by having this outlet of creativity.  Art truly helped me overcome the overwhelming challenges of this new life.  I was basically numb, asking myself “Where am I?” “Who am I”  “What am I doing?”

I was able to concentrate on developing this new skill, totally consuming.  It doesn’t permit you to think of anything else.  I found out that we are all "blind" and that it takes a lifetime to learn how to "see."  Not to copy what is in front of you, but to look carefully at the light, the color, the shadow, and only put down on paper what is the essence. The professor took the time to explain to me what painting is all about.  It is not just what you think you see... it is to learn to observe what is around the object or person that you wish to paint.  Notice the shadows, the tone of warmth, since they are as important as the object itself.   That was a revelation. Retain the essence of the picture and put it down in charcoal, water color, oil paint,whatever the medium.  Each day I would look at the work I had completed the day before and eagerly discovered the mistakes so I could improve on the next project. 

In White Plains, N.Y., where we lived in the winter, I went to the Art Students League in N.Y.C., with much younger students, and learned many different art media – sculpture, woodcut, etchings, oil painting - whatever they offered.  My husband built an extra room upstairs for me to use as a studio.  Before that, I tried to paint in my bedroom, but my daughter would go to school with green paint in her hair, as the brush was next to the palette on the dresser. 

The one medium I haven't yet tried and which fascinates me now is metal sculpture. In my next incarnation, I’d like to be a muscular man who does immense works, with a heavy torch for welding to create enormous sculptures.

Imagine what a pleasure it was for me, years later, to be asked by Tom Eder, one son of the people who introduced me to my husband, to be given one of my paintings as a wedding gift.  They came to my Cape Cod studio and picked out their favorite painting. 

Until Xavier Gonzalez died at the age of 92 I kissed him each time I saw him for the gift of having given me a new, happy life, rather than being resentful, depressed, or lost, which I might well have become.  My advice, if I may share it with you, is do not run for help to a psychiatrist, as most of them at the time such helping professionals needed more help than I did.  You just follow your passion, and try to help yourself, because you know best where it hurts. 

You have to find a new way to start trusting anybody after a trauma and learning to love. Be a “happy survivor” and trust your gut feeling always.

Written by a young 94 year old woman with good working brain and weak limbs ... for how long, who knows?  So make every day count... every MINUTE of every day count.  As long as you feel happy when you wake up in the morning looking forward to the next adventure, you are living!

Nika in her Wellfleet studio cottage