Amanda Rosenstein Davidson explains how she reconnected with her father through painting
Hi Amanda – For this year’s Artists Open Houses, you have a show called ‘My Daddy’s Tropical Plants’. Can you tell us about painting your father’s portrait and how this unlocked past memories?
My Dad was only 60 and I was just 7 years old when he died. With a grieving mother and three adult siblings leaving home, our house was sold and my once secure world simply crumbled away. All I had left were the small, faded black and white photos to gaze into… Who was this man who I had known so briefly?
There was this one intriguing photo depicting a young man in a white uniform, with an inscription written in German: ‘My Dear Father, from your youngster, Bornio 1929.’
Enlarged on my iPad, I started to paint his portrait in oils, his colouring similar to mine yet with blue grey eyes and dark red hair. With each brush stroke I hadn’t expect to feel such an immediate and powerful connection!
The exhibition explores many areas, including those of adoption, loss, mental health and escaping war – as well as a love of tropical plants. Can you tell us a little about this?
I had secured a residency at Sussex Prairie Gardens in Henfield for 2023. The exhibition was to showcase my father’s life’s work through reimagined paintings Then Covid happened and suddenly I could focus more deeply on some unanswered questions. Lockdown gave me time for extensive research. Online, I found additional documents, brochures and pictures that pieced together his adoption from Cardiff to Hamburg, his career onboard the luxury cruise-liners ‘SS Resolute, Milwaukee and Deutschland’ with brochure images showing his top deck plant shop and plant displays throughout the ship. From 1925-33 my Dad had sailed the world, potting plants, learning unique skills unlike any florist. With the Nazi uprising this dream job was stripped from him and he, along with his young fiancé, fled for their lives in 1936 when, miraculously, he discovered family in England.
From dangerous British secret war work in the camps, to re-establishing himself in London with his shop ‘Tropical Plants Display’, a business that secured commissions from Chelsea Flower Show, Earls Court and Royalty, his story is that of movies with incredible twists and turns of fortune, bravery and heartache.
As well as painting, you also explore these subjects through media of books, puppets, installation and film. Can you tell us about this ?
So my residency happened in 2024. I’ve written his story in a illustrated booklet, painted canvases inspired by his worldcruise photo album, created a colouring book entitled The Mindful Gardener, and self published my story of losing a parent, with all the mental anguish that children find hard to express. In this current exhibition, adapted and expanded especially for Artists Open Houses, I have created a suitcase installation, made a Hyman puppet, and along with all the above artworks and books, I will be showing a 1957 archive film about Covent Garden. Oh, and The Covent Gardener Magazine published his story on the 60th anniversary of his passing onto, I hope, another greener planet to explore.
What do you feel you have learned through the process of the project?
This entire process has given me, not the closure I had expected, but the realisation that through our world of Art, we can make the most unexpected connections.
I look forward to meeting you,
Amanda
Visit: My Daddy’s Tropical Plants
Fishing Quarter Gallery, 201 Kings Road Arches, Brighton, BN1 1NB
No.2 on the Central trail
Tuesday 5th-Sat 9th 11-4pm
@amanda_rosenstein_davidson