Destinies                                    

The tree in Destinies, supported by crude crutches, is a more wretched than its predecessor in Family Tree. Also resembling Stars of David, its leaves have begun their mutation into another substance, a process common to many of the paintings in this series. Some of them have taken on a metallic sheen, echoing the literal meaning of Magen David—shield or defender of David. This is a wounded tree, maimed by an unequal conflict whose source alert viewers should be well aware of. The remains of a brick wall suffice to remind us of the nature of that violent encounter.

The trunk has been sheared from its base, but the stump itself has also been ripped from its native moorings. Torn from the womb of nature, its roots reach out like tiny claws in search of more fertile earth to grasp as its home. A strange portable structure occupies the foreground of the painting, ready to roll somewhere, but with no one to convey it, and nowhere to convey it to. As in Family Tree, a single thin limb sprouts from the stump, its leaves, too, mirroring a slim hope for a transplanted future.

A pink shimmer lights the clouds that frame the scene, though one is never sure, here as elsewhere, whether the origin of light is a radiant sun above or sinister flames from below. The green hills, golden leaves, and rich blue sky of Family Tree create a far more vivid impression. Both tree images prompt us to recall the twin sagas of the Jewish people, their beginning in the tale of creation and their near doom in the story of the Holocaust destruction. We know the "whences," but at the pluralized title Destinies implies, the mystery of the "whithers" remains to be solved.