Bridging the past and present: Montreal artist illustrates Jewish immigrant experience

Artist Arnie Lipsey may have moved away from Montreal decades ago, but the city is at the heart of his latest project, "The Past is Before You."

The exhibit, now showing at the Museum of Jewish Montreal, tells the story of three generations of his family. Each portrait is inspired by old family photographs.

"I start with the goal of developing a portrait of the people involved and different locations or elements or props, if you will, to, to tell the story of who they were or are," he said.

Using a vibrant colour pallet, a nod to his long career in animation, his subject matter is often darker. His parents were European Jews who came to Montreal in the mid 1930s. Although they escaped Hitler's terror, they both lost many family members in the Holocaust.

Lipsey says his work explores the psychological legacies that link generations.

"I know that there's a lot of loss and there is pain and complexity of who they were and or are and I've tried not to shy away from that," he said.

Like in the portrait of his grandmother, Look Out, which shows his grandmother sitting in her Cote St-Luc home with her daughters. In the background on one side, is the lookout at Mount Royal Park. On the other side, is the shtetl she fled in Lithuania.

Lipsey also features his own story, as an art school graduate who left Montreal to pursue his career. Now based in Toronto, he says he wanted to return to his first love of painting.

Artist Arnie Lipsey's exhibit 'The Past is Before You' is on display now at the Museum of Jewish Montreal. (Arnie Lipsey)

Avery Monette, a tour guide at the Museum of Jewish Montreal, says it’s appropriate his work is being shown in Mile End, a neighbourhood with deep Jewish roots.

"The way that he's able to capture his family's memories and contrast them with the depictions of his family's life here in Montreal in the postwar period, combined with his family's life in pre-war Poland and Lithuania, it's really quite incredible to see the contrast between the two," she said.

She says the exhibit is also striking a chord with visitors.

"There's so many people who come into the museum to see this exhibit who find not only kind of memories of their own family in it, but memories of their own."

The "Past is Before You" will be showing into the fall at the museum, located at 5220 St-Laurent Boulevard.