Creating art is something 88-year-old Benjamin Feldshuh has been doing his entire life.<\/p>\n
He remembered the first time he picked up a paintbrush at 4 years old.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The paintings of 88-year-old\u00a0Benjamin Feldshuh will be on display at a one-night gallery near Union Square on Thursday
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He said he didn’t have the resources to do what he loved growing up, and instead joined the air force and later studied at Columbia University
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Feldshuh said he lost his love of painting until he met Jenny Lee, the co-founder of Hera
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Lee helped him set up the gallery, which will be held at Peerspace<\/p>\n
\u201cI let myself paint whatever I wanted to paint. And I painted a submarine with no forethought,\u201d he told NY1.<\/p>\n
Feldshuh grew up in Brooklyn and said he didn\u2019t have the resources to do what he loved most.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoverty was my experience, and it didn\u2019t even give me the money to buy paper or pen or ink or anything like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After graduating from Boys\u2019 High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, he enlisted in the air force and eventually went to Columbia University to become a psychiatrist. But all along, Feldshuh said painting was his passion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you paint, you create a reality that\u2019s as strong as the real world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After 50 years of painting, he wanted to share his art with the world. He spent $10,000 on a show, but it didn\u2019t turn out how he had hoped.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody loved the paintings. No one bought anything,\u201d he said. \u201cI made a terrible decision of not caring anymore and then just painting for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it left him feeling discouraged, and he resigned himself to art just being a hobby. Feldshuh stopped painting completely five years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last couple of years, it\u2019s drained my motivation to paint,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That was until a few months ago, when he was having his daily breakfast at Gemini Diner. Feldshuh said he met someone who would change his life \u2014 Jenny Lee.<\/p>\n
Lee is the co-founder of Hera, a company focused on helping families navigate caring for older adults on Medicare. She said she felt his story was worth sharing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love older adults, and he was eating breakfast alone and so we just walked up to him, started chatting,\u201d she told NY1. \u201cHe said, \u2018I really fear that after I pass, no one will have ever seen my art.\u2019 And that just stuck with us because I think a big part of aging is, oftentimes, we hear they feel invisible and they don\u2019t feel seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
That same day, after going to Feldshuh\u2019s apartment and seeing his paintings, Lee organized an art show to celebrate his work.<\/p>\n
She posted about Feldshuh\u2019s paintings on Hera\u2019s TikTok, where one video got more than 70,000 views.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just felt, like, this immense pull from the community of interest in his art. And luckily, you know, with how many people are interested, Peerspace had reached out. They offered an event space so we could actually host more people. And it just grew organically,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
Over 700 people have RSVP\u2019d to the one-night gallery happening near Union Square on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s beautiful to see the community rally around someone who\u2019s felt so invisible for so long,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
Feldshuh said he is feeling \u201coverwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost too much to think about,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the experience itself, I think, will change me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hera helped him sell about 20 of his paintings so far, and 100% of the profits go straight to Feldshuh.<\/p>\n
He said his newfound success has fueled his creativity, and he is now painting again after five years of not touching his easel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got an audience that people want to see my work, they want to see what I say and what I think and how I present my ideas. And now I can, I\u2019m motivated to, I\u2019ve never been motivated as strongly as I am now,\u201d Feldshuh said. \u201cI intend to work as a painter every day, like I\u2019m supposed to, and like Picasso worked.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Creating art is something 88-year-old Benjamin Feldshuh has been doing his entire life. He remembered the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2476,25,98,100,99,2025,3691,9,24,12,63,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-138257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-app-community","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-brooklyn","11":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","12":"tag-brooklyn-news","13":"tag-community-news","14":"tag-emma-barnett","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}