LEDI Artist Perspectives Interview: Sunflowers and Butterflies

This is a very powerful interview about the hardest painting I have ever done. Sunflowers and Butterflies Interview During the interview I share my thoughts and feelings about painting the story of an anonymous woman who was terrorized and then murdered in public view.

The photograph is of a woman chased by men and youth armed with clubs – Medova Street, Lviv, 1941.

The Lviv pogroms were the consecutive massacres of Jews living in the city of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) perpetrated by Ukrainian nationalists from June 30 to July 2 and July 25 to July 29, 1941 during the Wehrmacht’s attack on Soviet-occupied eastern Poland in World War II.

On the morning of July 25, the Ukrainian auxiliary police began arresting Jews in their homes, while civilians participated in acts of violence against them in the streets. Captured Jews were dragged to the Jewish cemetery and the Łąckiego Street prison, where they were fatally shot out of the public eye. Some 2,000 people were murdered in approximately three days.