This is Suse Lowenstein

Four years ago, I wrote of a time/circumstance that told of a very dark place of which I was going through...a transition that I had not wanted to experience. But sometimes, neither dread nor prayers can prevent that part of life.

I turned to writing down my thoughts and feelings as a sort of healing process. It helped. I found that if I could write words down from deep inside of myself, the pain had lost some of its power over me.

I could see my enemy face to face. It was comforting.

So, when I recently came across this news article, I knew that if my pain had been a firecracker, then hers had been an atomic bomb. But what she had done with her agony, was much the same as I done, only with a different venue and with a mightier scope. This is the kind of agony so deep and terrifying and raw that no parent should ever have to encounter.

From her bio:

"In the mid-sixties, I spent a year in Columbia, South America, where I had my first art exhibit. I then immigrated to the U.S. where I worked in textile design and as a fine arts painter. Later I met and married my husband Peter. Our two sons, Alexander and Lucas, were born in New York.

Somewhere in the mid-70s painting became too flat for me and I decided to create three-dimensional work. It quickly became a passion for me producing monumental sculpture of the human figure.

On December 21, 1988 while coming home for the holidays our older son Alexander was murdered along with 258 others aboard Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. A total of 270 people lost their lives in that terrorist act, 259 aboard the jumbo jet and 11 on the ground. Alexander was 21 years young.

This event became the trigger in beginning my most ambitious work, DARK ELEGY which consists of 75 larger than life figures. It depicts the very moment in which these women learned of the death of their loved one(s) aboard that flight.

I consider DARK ELEGY my most important work to date and most likely for all time." https://www.suselowenstein.com/about-1

Interesting to note, as I discovered in the yahoo news article above:

"In the years after the bombing she invited 75 women who lost loved ones in the Lockerbie bombing to her studio, where they stepped on a platform, disrobed and relived their anguish from December 21, 1988.

She asked each woman to recreate the position they assumed when they got the devastating news. Some screamed, begged and prayed. Others curled into a ball, raised their fists or covered their face with their hands. Some wept quietly.

Lowenstein says she asked the women to undress because grief strips people of everything."

That is the definition of RAW.

Inside each sculpture, close to the heart, is placed a memento of the loved one that the mother carries of her "lost" child. Inside the heart of Suse's is a picture of her with Alexander.

The circle of sculptures is in the backyard garden of the Lowenstein family home. Daily, she can "face her own enemy of grief" from every window of her house.

I am also including some of the works of Suse Lowenstein that reflect her life (outside of the pain) that are my favorites: