Artist Kimberly Brooks on Finding Her Way Back to Her Jewish Roots

Kimberly Brooks made quite a name for herself in the art world. Her collection of work, from realistic portraits to abstract landscapes and architecture, had been displayed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Roosevelt Library in Texas, as well as locally at LACMA, Mash Gallery, and California Institute of the Arts. 

Now, after a few key events over the past decade, the New York City native turned Angeleno is focusing on capturing her Jewish roots in her new pieces and exploring her culture and religion.

“When our son and daughter were approaching the age of becoming bar and bat mitzvah, it very much felt like my actions were rote, like, ‘I had this bat mitzvah, and you will too,’” she said. “My father, Leonard Shlain, was this famous surgeon and author who wrote ‘Alphabet Versus the Goddess.’ After he passed away, I was going through his papers and organizing his books and I found an amazing book on his shelf called ‘Jews, God and History,’ by Max Dimont.  It was this brilliant, riveting, and metaphorical march through the history of religion and Jews. I couldn’t believe it.  I thought to myself, ‘How come I didn’t know any of this?’”

Brooks grew up learning about Israel; her parents were “very Zionist,” she said. “Being Jewish meant being Zionist.” Her grandfather had been a pilot in World War II and flew weapons to Israel during the War of Independence. 

While she went to a Reform Jewish Hebrew school and synagogue – and enjoyed learning Hebrew and helping kids prepare for their bar and bat mitzvahs – she was not deeply engaged with her Judaism beyond that. What she focused on was her love of literature and art. 

“I was always the kid who was drawing everything,” she said. “I’d say to someone, ‘Sit for me. I want to draw your portrait.”

Once she graduated valedictorian from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in literature, Brooks became a speechwriter for Walter Landor, a German Jew who escaped and started one of the biggest design firms in the world.

“I believe designers and painters are cousins,” she said. “You’re still dealing with the issues of composition, impact, message, and feeling. It’s extremely similar. Being in that world nurtured the part of me that was an artist.”

Brooks would draw and paint as a hobby, but when she had her daughter Claire, that’s when she decided to take her art career more seriously.

“I was doing a sunset horseback ride at Griffith Park, and it was absolutely magical with the horses galloping on the way back in the dark,” she said. “There was a full moon. The moon said to me, ‘What are you waiting for?’”

She promptly enrolled in painting classes at Otis College of Art & Design and pursued her passion for art while raising her children. She saw that they went hand in hand. 

“Motherhood is so important and integral to being an artist,” Brooks said. “When I first started showing work, there was this cerebral consideration about motherhood. My work was directly related to having a little girl follow me around the house. This is when I created the series ‘Mom’s Friends.’”

“Mom’s Friends” was one of Brooks’ early solo exhibitions which featured realistic portraits inspired by Polaroid photos from the 1970s of her mom and her mom’s friends. It explored the explosion of feminism during that time and recreated Brooks’ utopian childhood, right before their lives began to fall apart.

“Every parent around me — in Marin County where I grew up — got divorced within the same two-year period,” she said. They even made a movie about it, called ‘Serial.’ “Being a child of divorce was maybe one of the most painful things I ever experienced.” 

She believed that Judaism was at odds with feminism, but when she sat down to actually study it, she found the opposite to be true.

“I have a new understanding of Judaism as a quite feminist religion,” Brooks said. “Reading the Torah while learning about the history of the Jewish people and their role in it made me reframe what it meant to be a woman and feminist and mother.”

Following her son’s and daughter’s bar and bat mitzvahs, Brooks then went to Israel with them in 2017. Though she’d gone before, it was for a brief visit. This time, she saw the beauty of the country and was fascinated with its history and architecture. Her paintings began to reflect her spiritual awakening; she created an oil, gold and silver piece on linen, calling it “Jerusalem,” which looks like a doorway into an ancient world, and paintings with frames inside of them capturing different stories from the Torah, like Sarah’s abduction.

“My work is based on ancient texts,” she said. “I wouldn’t say I am a highly religious person, but I do keep Shabbat now, and I’m very proud to be a Jew.” 

Brooks kept painting, and she put out her first book during the pandemic, “The New Oil Painting.” When she went to promote it on an app called Clubhouse, she uncovered a “beehive of antisemitism on it that was underground,” she said. “I never knew it was there.”  

Then, when Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched rockets into Israel in May of 2021, Brooks saw the bias against Israel in the media.

“Hamas started firing rockets into Israel, and CNN only said that Israel was shooting missiles into Gaza without saying why they were doing it,” she said. “I thought it was awfully unfair.”

Antisemitism and misinformation about Israel and the Jewish people were popping up everywhere, and Brooks wanted to protect her kids as they were going off to college. After Oct. 7, she teamed up with Emily Schrader, an Israeli American journalist, and Blake Flayton, another American writer who moved to Israel, to write “10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go to College: An Illustrated Guide.” Both wrote about their personal experiences with antisemitism in college, as well as facts that Jewish students need to know. Brooks provided the illustrations. 

“We knew we had to get this information out,” she said. “We were sending young students into a sawmill of misinformation.”

Along with beginning to keep Shabbat, Brooks joined WIZO, where she interviewed pro-Israel voices like Schrader and Eve Barlow. 

She is continuing to create work with Jewish themes, even though she is up against antisemitism in the art world as well. 

“The art world is convulsing just like every other section of society,” she said. “I believe in my heart that sunlight and oxygen on the problem will have an impact.”

In discovering herself, and tapping into her Judaism, Brooks had discovered her life’s goal.

“My Hebrew name is Keren, which means rays of light,” she said. “That’s the impact I want to have in this world. I want to shed light.”