Ed and Fred
Oil on wood
Miami, 2006
Recreation, Berlin, 2024
I never got to meet my Uncle Eddie. He was the oldest of 6 kids. Everyone spoke highly of him. They said he was caring and assertive, a free thinker with a big smile and a lust for life. He sparked an interest in chess in my Uncle Bradley; every time we played, I felt like we were, in a way, remembering him. I know him through the memories of others. On the bottom right, my Uncle Freddy and Eddie hug each other. My grandfather took the original photo in Haiti in the early 60s. Eddie and Freddy were inseparable. Eddie died at the age of 18; he fell off a cliff and drowned. Freddy jumped after him in an attempt to rescue his brother and almost lost his life trying. They never found his body. I painted the first version of this piece in 2006; My grandmother liked it, so I decided to gift it to her and paint myself another one. She placed the painting in the family living room beside other photos. On this table throughout the years would also sit the urns of my grandfather, my Uncle Bradley, and then my grandmother. Seeing these two pieces together makes me think of the Re-creation distances between our family; the paintings in between stand as a gestural abstrac-tion of this separation and emotional space.