Goldman goes places with watercolours

By HEATHER SOLOMON
Special to The CJN

Just give Lily Azérad Goldman a bottle of water and a glass, and she’ll soon have her paper filled with summer blooms, lakeside scenes and open markets. The water isn’t for drinking but to slake her creative thirst in the production of watercolours, one of the most difficult of art media and the most delicately beautiful.

Until Sept. 10, a solo exhibition of 30 of her paintings brightens the Pavillon des Arts de Ste. Adèle, 1364 chemin Pierre-Péladeau in Ste. Adèle, Exit 69 off the Laurentian Autoroute 15N.

“I was shocked that they gave me the whole summer on their walls. Usually a show is up only for two weeks,” says Goldman, who hung her works there the first of May. Her attraction is the variety of her subject matter and her versatility in depicting it.

She finds her imagination fuelled not only by flowers but also by the crisp colours of fruits and vegetables, as well as the human figure and its participation in historic scenes.

Images such as her Québécois folkdancers and wreath weavers are collected during her visits to local museums and historic villages where guides dress in period costumes.

One of her paintings, L’Arrivée de McTavish à Terrebonne, takes the viewer back through the centuries to colonial times when the new seigneur, sporting a tricorn hat, was paddled to a wild shore guarded by a stilt-legged heron.

Goldman knows the uncertainty, combined with excitement, of arriving in a new land. She was born in Heliopolis, Egypt, City of the Sun, at the apex of the Nile Delta. Her father’s family had fled persecution in Tetuan, Morocco, and Salonica, Greece. Her mother’s family was torn apart by the military draft in Turkey.

“We spoke French at home as well as at school in the Lycée Franco-Égyptien and we went to English school for two years,” Goldman recalls, “but being Jews, we never got Egyptian nationality. When it became impossible for Jews to live there anymore, we were able to get Italian passports to leave. I was 16.”

After three years in Paris, the family immigrated to Montreal. Here, the artist continued the art studies she loved, with Sylvia Lefkowitz, Ghitta Caiserman-Roth, Ming Ma and Leslie Coppold, and earned a BFA from Concordia University. She herself taught art at recreation centres, the Cummings Jewish Centre for Seniors, and for five years, she flew for the Quebec Ministry of Education to far-flung communities, teaching children how to paint.

Marrying Norman Goldman, a Notary, eventually led her to an entirely new aspect of her art. It came about upon his retirement. Earlier in his career, he’d written articles on Quebec law for the National Post.

“When I first started out in notarial law, I was starving and had no clients; so I figured to get noticed I would start writing,” he recalls. “A year ago, I began arranging trips to romantic resorts and inns that I write about and Lily illustrates. We’re associated with Web sites, two of the most popular being lovertripper.com and timesharebeat.com.”

Goldman takes her watercolour brushes on the road and has painted a bride who has kicked off her shoes in the foreground joining her groom for a wedding on the beach. She paints the intimacy of restaurant interiors, the bustle of shopping destinations and the mansion inns of Newport.

This month, they’re off to Vermont, then Massachusetts in September and Cape Cod in October. Over the winter, the couple will witness a marriage on a train speeding through the Grand Canyon. Florida is on the agenda, with a return to Canada likely to follow.

Retaining copyright, she markets her finished works on her azergo.com site after which she’s named her Ste. Adèle show. Her paintings have been delighting concertgoers to the Pavillon’s music series, the next recital of which is to be given on Aug. 16 by pianist Anne-Marie Dubois. You can reach the Pavillon at 450-229-2586.

This summer, Goldman is also represented at Elaina Zuker’s Galerie ArtXpo Montréal, 2116A Bleury St.