Behind the lemon groves
From mid-October to early December 2023, I painted “Ghosts of Lemon Groves Past.”
Inspired by a film called The Lemon Tree (2008), I explored the nature of a people’s love for a land. The lemons in the painting are not yet ripe, but carefully tended to by a farmer. Formerly part of a Palestinian village, the land on which this grove once grew is now part of an Israeli settlement. As I imagine it, the hereditary former owners of the grove have been forcibly moved to Gaza city more than a generation ago. They still have among their prized possessions the title to this plot of land. They mourn the loss of the grove. Today they fear for their lives as troops move in, yet still hope to return home. This painting explores hatred: between the one who takes land and the one who has lived in the land, whose ancestors have tended this lemon grove
