Description

A signed limited print may be available of this piece! (click here)

The sky was still dark when we hit the Grand Central Parkway.

His bag of paints clanked in the back seat. I cracked the window. Summer air rushed in cool and sweet. We were heading somewhere. We were always heading somewhere.

An hour later, we found it. Mill Dam Road, Huntington. Long Island.

He set up his easel facing east. I saw it, but he saw more.

The sun came through hard and orange. The water threw it back broken. Boats crowded together–tapping one another–blues and whites resting in the quiet. The harbor caught the light and held it.

I stood there, breathing it in.

My father had been painting New York his whole life. Every corner of it. He loved what the city gave him. This was still New York — just a different edge of it. A softer one.

Thirty years earlier, he had carried our family out of Hungary with almost nothing. Now, on a Sunday morning in 1986, he was here. Standing at the water's edge. Painting the light.

I didn't understand all of it yet.

I was just glad to be with him.

Can you feel it? That orange burning through the fog. The harbor holding still.

That's him — inside this painting — of a Harbor Sunrise. ❤️

Through My Father's Eyes