Julie Meetal Statement
Painting the Holocaust series has been a weight I have carried with me for a long time. Telling my parents’ stories created an ever present responsibility in my life. For years I struggled to find someone who would write their stories before I realized that it would be up to me to get this done. As an artist my form of education and documentation would be on canvas. With that in mind, I set out to paint three paintings, one for my mother, one for my father and one to show the out come of their struggles. Two years later I emerged with ten paintings. Some of the paintings were not planned at all, I often felt as though I was just a tool in producing these paintings. There were other forces in control of my paint brush.
It has been an incredible experience, a journey in which I found my own spirituality and my own sense of being. It has been at times difficult at other times emotional but mostly one that has been very gratifying and comforting. I feel that I have fulfilled a mission.
Being the daughter of survivors has made me more sensitive to the culture and community that was destroyed in Europe, and after visiting Poland, that was even more apparent. If in some way I can remind the world of what was taken from us and warn younger generations that today’s intolerance, fanaticism and hatred can destroy their world as they once destroyed so many. That powerful alert systems must be built not only against the fury of nature — a tsunami or storm or eruption — but above all against the folly of man. Because we know from bitter experience that the human animal is capable of the worst, as well as the best — of madness as of genius — and that the unthinkable remains possible.
My intention of my paintings and sculptures is to give a voice to all those who have perished. “Let the world know,”
“Do not forget us.”
My painting; “Piercing through the darkness” is a statement, its a reminder, but its mostly my journey moving forward beyond the Holocaust. It is me saying to the world; I am a proud daughter of the Holocaust! My existence, my children and grandchildren are proof that we have triumphed over evil.