Art in Giving

Eliane Markoff

www.artingiving.org 

I found my passion for painting after leaving the business world of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998.  I experienced an urge to express myself by putting paint to brush and brush to canvass.  I quickly developed my own unique style first with watercolor and then with oil. 

My emphasis has been on floral arrangements.  My signature piece is “Flowers of Hope” which exemplifies not only my style but my motivation for painting.  

My family established The Rachel Molly Markoff Foundation around the same time that I started painting.  It was created to fund research and social programs to assist children and their families cope with childhood cancer, particularly brain tumors.  Rachel was my twin daughter who died of a brain tumor in 1992 one week after her ninth birthday.   

Painting served several purposes: it continues to provide therapy to help me work through the grief of losing a child; it helps me express my artistic ability and evoke the viewer; and it also provides funds for the research and programs that the Foundation underwrites.  All proceeds from my paintings are paid to the Foundation. 

“Flowers of Hope” has the mellow hues of blossoms to exemplify the warm breezes of summer in colorful fields, the same kind of fields that Rachel loved to play in.  The coordination of floral colors creates a cool contrast to the hot summer sun that illuminates the background sky.   

These vibrant floral colors become more vivid and intense in other popular paintings such as my bowls of fresh fruit. 

“Flowers of Hope” was jury selected in the spring of 2000 to be auctioned by the “Two Collection” sponsored by WGHB-Channel 2.  Other works jury selected in future years included “Vase of Hope”, “Branches on A Tree” and “The Bird Bath”. 

I am proud to say that I have a “Bird Bath” painting in the permanent collection of The Wellesley Free Library and several floral paintings in the Newton Wellesley Hospital, including the main lobby. My paintings are also exhibited at Boston Private Bank and Trust Company in Boston, Children’s Hospital, Frame Shop and Gallery (Natick and Medfield), and in the waiting areas of Providence's Miriam Hospital.  A national REIT, Equity Office, commissioned a majestic 4’ by 5’ “Flowers of Hope” which now hangs in Equity Office’s local headquarters in Boston.