Illustrating a thriving artistic career

Once a struggling artist, Amaranth Ehrenhalt, now a relatively successful abstract expressionist who works in a variety of media, spoke at the Five Towns Senior Center on July 12.

Ehrenhalt showed a video of herself, which described her passion for art that began at age 4. She spent a lot of time at museums as a child, and paintings are as significant to her as food, air and water, she said. Ehrenhalt told stories and discussed innovative artists who were ahead of their time, such as Van Goh and Jackson Pollock, and noted her article about a famous artist she knew, Giacometti, which will appear in the September issue of Vogue.

Ehrenhalt has made thousands of paintings, as well as sculptures, mosaics, etchings and tapestries, and her work has been reproduced on silk, such as on the colorful, vibrant scarf she wore at the senior center.

“Whatever I am working on at the time takes my complete energy and attention,” she said. “The more you look at my paintings, the more they speak to you.”

Ehrenhalt is influenced by everything she sees; she pays attention to colors around her. “As an artist, you see things that other people don’t see,” she said.

Recently, Ehrenhalt had a show at the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in Manhattan, and the February issue of Art in America said that in her paintings, “color-forms interact with linear overlays, creating a tension that evokes the energy of life itself.”

Ehrenhalt now lives in New York City, previously she lived in Paris for many years. She grew up in Philadelphia and received a scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, attended a two your course at the Barnes Foundation and achieved a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. Ehrenhalt has visited Hewlett many times because her cousin, Selma Seider, who created the Five Towns Music Competition lived in Hewlett. Seider died on July 5. She was 90.

“The Philadelphia school system recognized me as an artistically gifted child,” said Ehrenhalt, who did a special art program as a child, insisting on staying until the museum closed at 6 p.m. In addition, she said her two years at the Barnes Foundation were so incredible that she never missed a class.

In Paris, Ehrenhalt lived in an artistic community with her artist husband and two children. The family struggled to make ends meet, but she came across artists who were fascinated by her work and helped her. Sonia Delaunay, a French artist, sent Ehrenhalt a roasted turkey, presents for her children, and a note saying that she could go to Delaunay’s art supply person, buy paints and leave the bill for Delaunay.

The attendants at the senior center were impressed by Ehrenhalt. “She’s a fascinating person,” said Burt Kahn, who has lived in Hewlett for 62 years.

“I’m not used to modern art, but she aroused my curiosity and the colors she uses are just amazing.” Maxine Schiff, a classical painter from Hewlett, added that Ehrenhalt is a “wonderful painter; she does lovely work.”