The Jewish Chicken Farm Series

In this series of oil paintings, still in process, Paula Gottlieb brings to life the vanished culture of New Jersey’s Jewish chicken Farms of the 1940’s and 50’s. The artist grew up on a farm with 10,000 free range chickens within a community of Jewish people leaving urban environments to make a living on the land . These farms have long disappeared, subsumed by large egg operations.

Paula Gottlieb has worked from family photographs in black and white and created oil paintings in color, reviving the way of life of her childhood. The series consists of landscapes and portraits of her parents, grandmother, her siblings, and herself. In addition to being beautiful, skillfully executed works of art, they evoke a feeling of a time long gone and a place in a different world and are therefore works of history, of culture.

This series of paintings is available for exhibition with commentary by the artist in schools, synagogues, or Jewish community centers, as well as for sale.