TV star Lisa Edelstein paints her Jewish family
Wayne-born actress-turned-artist has her first solo exhibition
Like many of us left without plans during the initial covid-19 lockdown in 2020, Lisa Edelstein, who grew up in Wayne, spent some of her time rummaging through old family photographs. But instead of just basking in the nostalgia, she was also on the lookout for her next painting project.
Since then, the actress, known for her often-Jewish roles on several hit TV shows — from “House” to “Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce” to “The West Wing” to “The Kominsky Method” — has been producing paintings that recreate old photos of her Jewish family. She showed them at her first solo art exhibition, the just-closed “Family,” at the SFA Advisory art gallery in downtown Manhattan.
“I don’t think there is any way around my Jewishness being a part of what I do or make, whether or not I intend to make it a part of it,” Ms. Edelstein said. “Almost every role I get turns Jewish if it lasts long enough. I don’t think of myself as so obviously a Jew, but my name definitely gives it away, and I don’t mind.”
Her Jewish identity comes through in her paintings, too. Like the photos they are modeled after, they capture family members in candid moments, often at group events. There are works of men in kippot kissing family members on the cheek at a celebration, of a woman in mid-phone call, of kids and adults stuffing their faces at a pizza parlor.
“What I’m looking for are those images that tell a more honest story, a caught moment, an odd angle, an awkward pose,” Ms. Edelstein said. “We don’t have images like that anymore. The world is too camera-savvy, and our phones are so high-tech that we can just delete things that tell stories we’d like to forget or filter into something else.
“Back when we took pictures on film, each photo took time, effort, and money to produce, so even if we hated it, we tended to keep it, at least in a box somewhere. Those are the ones I’m looking for.”
Ms. Edelstein, 56, grew up in a Conservative household, observing Shabbat and all the holidays.
“Though I was raised with a healthy Jewish identity, it wasn’t without embarrassment and apologetics,” she said. It didn’t help that the local head of the school board, who later became mayor, published an article in a local paper telling people not to vote for Jews for the school board because they would cancel Christmas.
“The way people talk about Jewish women in particular, with for example the word JAP” — an insult aimed at young women, it’s short for Jewish American Princess — “is really disgusting,” she said. “On some level, I think there was a feeling that I needed to dissociate myself with that identity in order to not be that thing that people associated with that identity.”
She did consider changing her name when she moved to Los Angeles in 1991, thinking it could help her career, she said. But she realized that doing so would have taken away from any feeling of true success she might have. It was letting Hitler win, she said.
She since has dealt with antisemitism in her career, from being lumped into a non-specific “ethnic” category at its start, to not getting a job because the production already had a Jewish actor — and two Jews were considered one Jew too many.
A few years ago, Ms. Edelstein posted an old photo of herself with her mother and two of her siblings on Instagram for her mother’s birthday. The photo had been taken in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. She got death threats in public comments, which she deleted, on the post.
“And lately, just painting a yarmulke feels like a radical move, never mind painting an El Al logo or even just Jewish faces,” she said. “It’s suddenly daring to just be publicly Jewish.”
But she wasn’t afraid to put Jewish-themed art on display. She was more nervous about the entire project, the whole concept of showing her art, in the first place.
“Actresses are a breed that people love, and they also love to hate, so you just don’t know what the public response is going to be,” she said. “But I felt very supported within the art community, at least the one I’m in.”
Ms. Edelstein enjoyed drawing when she was a child, and continued through high school, but then she stopped making art. It wasn’t until the pandemic lockdown that she returned to it seriously. Her return started with buying adult coloring books to fill the time, but she didn’t like the images in them and decided to make her own instead. Her husband, Robert Russell, who is an artist, pushed her to do more. Her images got larger and larger, and then she went from magic marker to watercolor.
Mr. Russell always encouraged her to make things — when they first started dating, he asked her to make him a drawing about a week into their relationship. Always a fan of using photography as a starting point for her work, she gave him a drawing of herself at 4 years old, sitting on the beach, holding a crab. (He had given her a painting of two doves on their second date.)
“Suddenly I realized I actually did have permission to do this stuff, not because he gave it to me, but because I always had,” Ms. Edelstein said.
She will continue to act, write, and direct, but she wants to continue in her new career, too. Edelstein is toying with the idea of adding drawings to a Haggadah that she wrote for her family and updates every year. If she published it, the drawings could turn the seder book into a coloring book of sorts for small children.
“I have a lot of energy, so I’m up for whatever,” she said. “And I think it’s important to view all of these things as one. They’re just different ways my body pushes out ideas. Each one feeds the other.”
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
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