“Smoke in the cornfield”, is an exhibition of oil and mixed media paintings, ranging from representational images of a cornfield being cut down by 1930’s-40’s farm machinery and abstract pieces of the barren fields around Auschwitz in Poland which were polluted by the ash and dust from the crematoria operated in the camps. The cornfield has no defence against the harvest as 6 million Jews, 212 thousand Roma and Sinti Gypsies, and 70 thousand disabled people in Germany had no defence against the holocaust. The Jews were stripped of all possessions, had no army and in the end had no citizenship to protect them.

But seeds remain and survive and I am very proud to have known and worked with Helen Lewis Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor liberated from Auschwitz by the Russian army. Helen was a professional dancer and choreographer, who after learning that her first husband Paul had died in the camp, came to Belfast in 1947 to marry an old friend who had escaped Europe before the war. Belfast became her home choreographing for theatre, opera, and founding the Belfast modern dance group. I would recommend all should read her book “A time to speak”, a personal history of her life and experience in the Terezin ghetto and then in Auschwitz.

A group exhibition of paintings by Juste Bernotaite, Joanne Jamison, and a series of paintings by Cliff Brooks, (“Smoke in the Cornfield”), will open in the Engine Room Gallery Thursday 6th February ending Saturday 1st March 2025.