Whatever Happened To Luba’s Twin?

“Over the course of my adolescence and into adulthood, my mother created several paintings of her mother, Luba, who died before I was born. Soon after my mother was diagnosed with cancer in the last days of 2024, I suggested we begin a painting dialogue, like a visual game of telephone, passing painted versions of Luba back and forth. Each pass, the paintings inevitably shift in gesture, color, emotion, brushstroke and scale. Some things are emphasized, others left out, and new images appear. As the project progresses, the resulting portraits veer further and further from the original, and my mother and myself emerge: our fantasies, desires and anxieties about Luba, ourselves, and each other within our shared and divergent realities.”

-Vera Weinfield

“My mother Luba rarely spoke of herself or her history. But somehow, I learned that she left Russia on a boat at age seven with her mother, dropped out of school in the eighth grade, and became a beautician. So when she died unexpectedly at the age of 62, I was left with fragments of memories, old photographs, and a bottomless reservoir of feelings. Out of black and white snapshots and shadowy sensations, I searched for and created Luba in my paintings.” 

-Joyce Block