Painted memories
On processing grief through creation, a glimpse into pieces I hold dear to my heart, and how we can pay it forward, together.
There’s something I told myself when I started painting in 2021: I would never sell the originals.
I started during COVID, at a time when everything felt frozen. I had just ended a long relationship, I lost a close family member, and I had moved back into my family’s home, where I felt stuck in my childhood bedroom. My work at the time offered a virtual painting class (remember those?), so I signed up, figuring, why not? Almost immediately, I realized that painting was the opposite of everything else happening in my life. It was off the computer, slow, quiet, and mine.
Painting became how I processed what I was going through. And over time, it became something else: a way to revisit memories and make them new again. To sit with a moment that I’d lived through and pay attention to it again through the details felt like giving the memory another life.
I’ve come to think this is part of how grief works. Living, really, is about creating new memories on top of old ones. The old ones don’t disappear; they get held by the new ones. Painting taught me that.
I’ve been calling these pieces painted memories because that’s what each of these has been. They are a moment I’ve kept and painted into something I can hold and relive again.
Why I’m sharing them now
When my friend Nina posted that she was doing an open call for makers in her Bushwick Maker’s Market on July 25, with 10% of sales going to a Lebanon mutual aid organization, I was inspired. It felt like the right reason to make an exception to the rule that I’d set for myself.
I’m not selling the originals. I have instead turned four of my paintings into postcards. They are small photo reproductions, printed on beautiful matte cardstock. They feel like the right form for love letters to memory: small, sendable, made to be passed along or enjoyed, as I do.
The four paintings
All photos by me, in the moment. Photos of paintings by Daniel Bonner.
🍥 2015 This was one of the first paintings I ever made. A photograph I’d taken back in 2015, when I was a lost twenty-something year-old. I came back to it years later, when I needed something beautiful to practice on. The sky was the perfect way to learn to blend gradients, and an honest love letter to who I was at the time.
cobble hill walks This was painted after I moved back to New York and was living alone for the first time. I took long walks through the neighborhood, training myself to pay attention to my surroundings and to be present. One evening, this block stopped me. I’d never painted buildings before, and you can see the imperfections. But it was the right place to learn about texture and detail. A small honor of those walks, when I was learning what it was like to spend real time with myself.
fort greene A quick moment outside Miss Ada, where I was meeting my girlfriends for dinner. The light caught the building exactly right. Fort Greene will always have a particular place in my heart: the park nearby is where the start of the end of my last relationship sparked. A neighborhood that holds growth, sadness, and passing time all at once.
brooklyn promenade, pier 5 I spent so much of my first two years in Brooklyn walking to the water. Pier 5 was where I’d sit and watch the sunset whenever I had a chance. I’ve always loved the water and to be able to sit, hear it crash against the rocks, and for a moment, to enjoy being. This probably isn’t the original photo I based the painting on, but close enough.
At the table on July 25
I’ll be at the Bushwick Makers Market on Saturday July 25 from 1-7PM. Here’s what I’m bringing:
painted memories postcards ($10 each or a set of 4 for $35): printed reproductions of the four paintings above (plus a few extras)
send love kit ($10): sit at the table, write a message to someone you love, decorate with stamps, stickers, and markers. I’ll mail it for you. Includes an instant photo of your choice at the event.
Instant photo ($3): instant photo of you (or whatever you’d like to take a memory of the day home with you)
10% of every sale in-person and online until July 25 will go to the Sanad Campaign, a humanitarian campaign dedicated to helping displaced families from South Lebanon, the Beqaa, and Baalbek who were forced to leave their homes and move to different areas across Lebanon.
If you can’t make it July 25
If you’re not in NYC or can’t make it that day, you can pre-order through the link below. I’ll mail your postcards the week after the market (US only).
Quantities are adjustable at checkout, simply click the “quantity” to remove or add more.
Free pickup at the market on July 25
$5 flat rate shipping anywhere in the US
Pre-orders close July 25 for guaranteed mailing
Want to support further? There’s a “pay what feels right” option at checkout
Come say hi
If you can make it on Saturday, July 25, please come. I’d love to meet you. Send a letter to someone you love. Make a new memory on top of an old one.
With love, Leslie
Incredible paintings!! You are incredible