A formidable number of family snapshots adorn Ida Berkowitz’s cottage.
She has, in fact, virtually photo-documented the transformation of a great-granddaughter from a toddler into a 6-foot-tall lawyer.
But even more remarkable are the handful of her own creations sprinkled across the walls: Desert scenes, a Tuscan bakery, a field of flowers, a mountain lake, a bowl of fruit upset on a countertop.
Many people paint, but most don’t have the Tiburon resident’s back story. First, she’s 90, and only picked up a brush at the age of 82. Second, she’s nearly blind.
Berkowitz’s poor eyesight precludes the necessary details of portraiture, but she still has a keen eye for color, and mixes lively and unconventional hues for her landscape and still-life works. And unlike Grandma Moses, who first picked up a brush at a similarly advanced age, Berkowitz’s paintings do not have an unschooled, childlike look.
“I can’t do too much detail, but I can do color,” said the feisty, diminutive nonagenarian.
“I just love to mix up colors. I come up with the oddest ones. Color is the big thing.”
Her art instructor, Edo Patrini, “Calls me ‘Wild Ida.’ I go from one thing to another.” If Berkowitz is in a stormy mood, she’ll paint something dark and misty. If she’s in a good mood, she may paint a bright picture of a pastoral scene or Yosemite Valley. Much of her inspiration comes from calendar photos, and her younger daughter, Susan, of Mill Valley, is always scouring calendars for source material.
Berkowitz’s paintings are currently on display, along with the work of many other blind or visually impaired artists, at San Francisco City Hall in an exhibition sponsored by Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The show runs until Oct. 30, and a public reception is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 9, at 5:30 p.m.
Berkowitz’s physical limitations mean she only paints during the sessions retired artist Patrini (at 80, a “young guy”) holds at his San Rafael senior facility every couple of weeks. The small paintings decorating her apartment (and the homes of her family and friends) usually take from two to three sessions, or about six to nine hours, to create.
The painting sessions are a bit of “me time” after what Berkowitz describes as a lifetime of giving. She was born in Danbury, Conn., in 1914, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania.
When she was 8, her family moved to Brooklyn and, finding herself surrounded by Jews, Berkowitz asked if she was Jewish, too. Berkowitz’s father worked in hat factories and her mother was a seamstress in a sweatshop. When she was 12, her father walked out on the family.
She graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1930, at the height of the Depression, and landed an office job to support her family and her older brother’s academic pursuits. Berkowitz had been an excellent student and aspired to attend Hunter College and become a nurse, but, like so many in the Depression era, her plans were rudely altered.
It would not be the first time. World War II forced Berkowitz and her husband, Jack, to shut down their thriving New York deli, when he was forced into war work.
In 1973, Jack — “the only man in my life” — died. With her daughters grown, she moved to Fremont in the early 1980s, and to her current home eight years ago.
While she had never so much as lifted a brush, Berkowitz’s artistic talent was not a surprise. Several intricate needlepoint designs — including a recreation of a Marc Chagal stained-glass window — are given places of honor in her small cottage at a Marin seniors complex.
“I am the token Jew here,” the Yiddish-speaking great-grandma said with a chuckle.
Dozens and dozens of Berkowitz paintings — an English canal, a waterfall, a Van Gogh-like field of orange flowers — sit in a shopping bag near her front window. When the time comes, she’ll find the right place to put them.
“My granddaughter in Canada has about five of them. I’ve given a lot of paintings away,” she said.
And though the rest of her body is catching up with her eyes, Berkowitz can’t help but crack a joke.
“My mother despaired of my ever getting married, because I had to wear glasses, and you know what glasses looked like then — well, no you don’t,” she said with a laugh.
“Oh, I have to keep my diabetes under control. And I have carpal tunnel. And I have arthritis. And I wear hearing aids. And I have a bad hip. But, other than that, I’m in fine shape,” she added with a sly grin.