Description

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Profound passion lives in seemingly ordinary moments.

I remember seeing this piece first in my teenage years. I wondered, “What’s the big deal? Why would anyone consider this art? So what? Who cares? Two guys playing cards.”

Wisdom has a schedule, and for me that came some years later. When you lack wisdom, you don't know it until you get it. And in my young mind, all I could see was that Dad's art was a weird, disconnected mixed bag—drawings and paintings of people, landscapes, still-lifes. What was the common thread? I wondered about that.

Then, one day—20 years later—while photographing his art for a catalog, it struck me. I looked at this piece again, and others like it, and still others not like it, and saw something real. Something new. A revelation. I saw that in all of Dad's work, whether of a homeless person on a bench, a landscape, or these Card Players, he was conveying a message about humanity—in all its contrast, beauty, and passion.

In this work, at first, it looks pretty simple: a couple of guys sitting on a park bench playing cards. But there is a bigger message that Dad saw in their posture and position. The way the one on the left is holding his cards, grinning at them, with certainty—he knows he's got the winning hand. And how the other, without even seeing his face, is looking back at his opponent, wondering why he's so confident. He's leaning forward as the other sits back confidently. That micro-moment is hard to capture, but it's all there for us to take part in the excitement.

The date is 1962, just 6 years after we arrived in the United States (1956), and just about one year since we moved to New York City. Mom and Dad had been through a lot—escaping Soviet Hungary, leaving everything behind—arriving in America with nothing, living in subsidized housing, and now Mom had a job and we had our own apartment.

When I was young, Dad was just my father. But as I gained wisdom, he became more - much more. None of my friends had a dad like mine. He was a creative anomaly, and the more I lived, the more I appreciated and loved his anomalous ways.

Two men on a bench. Cards held close. One grinning. One leaning. Dad saw it. I see it now, too.

Card Players. ❤️

Through My Father's Eyes