“Cleansing Ritual”
48 X 36
Mixed Media
“Cleansing Ritual" is a painting about my early memories. Only someone who went to a Turkish bath with her mother and grandmother as a child can truly feel the nostalgia of the painting. It tells of times when we prepared big bags with our copper bowls, towels and fresh clean clothes and went to the Turkish bath. Each household had silver ibriks, brass Albanian coffee grinders, hot mangals and coal samovars. A child with the eyes of an artist, I was mesmerized by the naked bodies of women of different ages: teenagers with beautiful breasts, young mothers with striated bellies and small children, gypsies with long black braids, grandmothers soaking into hot mineral pools and attendants wrapped in steam. We waited for our turn to take the slippery wooden pattens from the women who were coming out, so that we could put them on in turn and enter the bath. It is the story of the times when I watched soap bubbles and grime flowing down the marble drain.