CHARLES DORNOFF - memorial commission by Ethan Shvartzman

CHARLES DORNOFF - memorial commission by Ethan Shvartzman

My partner, Ethan, is a water color artist and he did this memorial commission piece to remember my dad who passed away in May of 2007.

This piece is priceless and made with lots of love. It started as an idea to make a painting for my mom a few years ago. I wanted to have him use his talents to create a piece for my mom to enjoy at her place. It eventually led him to create this practice run piece that turned out beautiful and a treasured gift for my Aunt Grace before she passed away, so she could remember her brother as she transitioned from this life into the next.

It was created on June 6th, 2021; given to my Aunt Grace on June 10th; I saw my aunt a few more times til July 5th, which was the last day I saw her before I had to leave for a film project in New Orleans, called WE HAVE A GHOST. She then passed away on August 1st, 2021. This is an emotional piece, but the blessings the art gave my aunt is sentiments of joy that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life. She had tears of joy, so full of emotion, she clutched the painting hard and was so thrilled to have the likeness of her brother in art to remember him daily. My aunt was also an artist and studied under SR CORITA KENT, when she was at Immaculate Heart College, she turned her talents to teach art to elementary school kids.

Working in watercolor is really difficult medium from what I’ve seen, Ethan has worked really hard on precision in a medium that is very uncontrollable, especially depending on the type of brushes, paper, binding agents, granularity of size and natural pigment materials used to create the paint. The blooms you can sometimes get are gorgeous and the bleeding edges unique, but really hard to recreate. When he paints a piece, it’s usually a start to finish in the single sitidown to do it, since rewetting and layering the art can potentially alter the layers underneath. He’s learned a lot in his technique and loves experimenting with various colors and how they react.

Ethan is extremely critical of his art and has a hard time moving past the flaws he sees, but the emotion both he and I experienced when Grace grabbed onto the art and cried, gave him an understanding that it doesn’t have to be perfect and the emotional very personal payoff for a piece like this is priceless. It was hard to say goodbye to my aunt, but knowing the joy she got from Ethan’s art made the time immeasurable. I attached a few pictures of the moments. Art being this powerful and personal is unlike anything else in my collection and happy to now use this piece at home to memorialize both my dad and his sister, my aunt Grace Dornoff.