A hugely controversial event in 2016 proved transformative for this Brisbane painter, who even changed her name in outrage.
When the United Nations passed a 2016 resolution erasing Jewish ties to the holy city of Jerusalem, Brisbane painter Wendy Donnellan was furious. So outraged, in fact, that she changed her name.
Meet Elizabeth Ruth Stein.
She has taken her Jewish great-grandmother’s surname and grandmother’s first name, and uses her middle name of Elizabeth.
“Saying the Jewish people had no demonstrated history with the city of Jerusalem was outrageous and like saying the Chinese had no link with the Great Wall,” says Stein, a divorced mother of three.
The 58-year-old’s exuberant acrylic paintings are on display in Revival Art and Design in Albion, along with 15 other local artists’ works, in a Summer Soiree event until November 29.
Stein began painting when a friend gave her an easel for her 49th birthday and told her she needed to de-stress or she’d become sick again.
“I liked the contemplative feeling of moving the paint around on a blank canvas,” says Stein, in remission following a cancer diagnosis in 2003.
Read the article by Kylie Lang in The Courier-Mail.