Blossom House · Chelsea, New York
ORIGINS
Blossom Verlinsky · 1937 – 2019
New York City Artist
Woman with Bowl of Fruit
New York City · 1937 – 2019
Blossom Verlinsky
Blossom Verlinsky was a New York City artist who spent over fifty years in an unbroken love affair with painting. Born 1937 at Beth Israel Hospital, overlooking Gramercy Park — she would spend her whole life within blocks of where she began.
She studied at The Art Students League and Brooklyn College — known to students as "The Brooklyn Bauhaus" — where Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Kurt Seligmann, Burgoyne Diller, Alfred Russell, and Jimmy Ernst were among her professors. She earned a B.S. in Geology and Art from Brooklyn College and an MFA from Brooklyn College and New York University.
The geology never left her. Her later paintings use patterns and colors to create tactile recollections of precious stones — folded linen emphasizing the strata of retained and recalled memories. She was painting the earth from the inside.
Her paintings were shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York City and Florida, including multiple exhibitions at Carter Burden Gallery in Chelsea. Her work is held in numerous private collections — including every wall of Blossom House, her daughter's home in Chelsea.
She painted until the very end.
50 years · unbroken
Photo: Seymour Jacobs
The Practice
She Painted Where She Lived
Her paintings were deeply personal — made of memories. New York streets, the ocean, myths and friends both near and lost.
She worked at easels, at tables, on her lap, on the floor. She used the largest brushes and the tiniest. She started each canvas by blocking in figures and background fast, covering it quickly with a large brush — then placed small pieces of color with smaller ones, building the surface until it pulsed.
Her work was shown at Carter Burden Gallery in Chelsea: Secret Life of Colors (June 2016) and Big Love (February 2018). Tango (2017, acrylic on raw linen, 54 × 84 in) was among her late masterworks.
"Thankfully, I am able to paint — which makes me feel human."
— Facebook, March 2019
A Life's Work
The Work
New York City · 1960s – 2019 · Carter Burden Gallery, Chelsea
Roots · Transmission · Continuation
The Lineage
Poet · Artist · Mystic · Romania → Ellis Island → New York City
Anna Verlinsky
Blossom's mother. She escaped Romania, lied about her age at Ellis Island, and brought her whole family to America. She worked in the fur factory sweatshops of the fashion district. She wrote poetry. She made art. She kept dried spiders on her windowsill to guard against evil. And she read beans — the ancient Balkan divination practice called favomancy — casting 41 grains to read the shape of fate. Her true birth year was never known. She is, fittingly, a woman outside of time.
Engineer · Russia → New York City
Nathan Verlinsky
Blossom's father, Nico's grandfather. An engineer from Russia who passed before Nico was born. His blueprint runs through the bloodline — the structural mind, the builder of things that work. The engineer half of everything.
Painter · New York City · 1937 – 2019
Blossom Verlinsky
Studied under Rothko and Reinhardt. Painted for 50 years without stopping. Kept painting to feel human. Named this house.
Anna Verlinsky fled Romania in the dark.
Branislav fled Yugoslavia in the dark.
Two escapes. Two borders. Two people who reinvented themselves in New York City.
Both ended up building something with their hands.
Architect · Builder · Escapee · Jazz Lover · Belgrade → New York City · Age 96
Branislav Loncarevic The Crocodile
At 19 years old, Branislav fled communist Yugoslavia in the dark of night. He traveled from Belgrade to Lake Prespa — the tri-border lake between Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece — and swam across to Greece with a young friend, leaving behind everything he had ever known.
From Greece: Chicago. Then the U.S. Army, where he served. Then university. Then New York City — drawn by jazz, by American women, by art and culture and the life he had swum toward.
He became an architect. He met Blossom. And he built Blossom House entirely by hand.
At 96, he is still here. Still watching.
Engineer · Artist · Builder · Chelsea, NYC · b. 1968
Nico McLane
20+ years in broadcast infrastructure and enterprise technology. Emmy-nominated. Patented. The daughter who carries both streams — art and engineering, mysticism and precision — and built Blossom House into what it is now. The lineage, continuing.
The Experiment · Brooklyn College
The Veil
In college, she volunteered for psychic experiments — sensory deprivation, a locked room, darkness and silence. In that silence she saw other dimensions, other lifeforms. She saw the crack at the edge of the universe.
She said it looked like she was inside an eggshell.
She spent the rest of her life painting what she found there.
Beth Israel Hospital · Gramercy Park · New York City
The Circle
She was born at Beth Israel Hospital, overlooking Gramercy Park.
When the time came, Nico brought her home to Beth Israel —
where Blossom spent her final days looking out at the same sky
she had arrived under, eighty-two years before.
The circle, complete.
Artist Statements · Facebook · 1960s – 2019
In Her Words
"My paintings are deeply personal, made of memories. New York streets, the ocean, myths and friends both near and lost are the essence of my work. Yet I am always surprised at the images that appear on the canvas. I try not to think about what they mean and just enjoy the process. I begin the painting by blocking in figures and background with a large brush covering the canvas quickly. I then place small pieces of color with smaller brushes. My intent now is to create intense, patterned, textured and luminescent surfaces."
— Artist Statement, Saatchi Art
"The images are dependent on color and pattern for their form and come from a place deep inside that surprises me when I see them on the canvas. The creative process after years of conscious study and work still is a mysterious process."
— Artist Statement, Saatchi Art
"All that I have experienced, dreamt and digested has been synthesized through color and is the subject of my paintings. My interest in the natural world and geology has a profound effect on my art. My love of Asian Art, Medieval Illumination, Bonnard, Klimt, Matisse and Picasso have also found their way into my art. In addition, I have been deeply inspired by my studies with Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Kurt Seligmann, Burgoyne Diller, Alfred Russell and Jimmy Ernst and other giants of Abstract Art and continue the traditions of their teachings."
— Artist Statement, Artist Marketing Resources
"So many rules — so many restrictions — I rebelled. I paint where I live. I use all sorts of brushes — even larger and tiniest. I paint at easels, tables, on my lap and even on the floor."
— Facebook, October 2017
"Thankfully, I am able to paint — which makes me feel human."
— Facebook, March 2019
"I can meditate on the ocean and sky and feel the healing of nature around me."
— Facebook, September 2018
Memorial Sloan Kettering · June 8, 2019
June 8, 2019
Maybe my last words to you — I'm in Sloan Kettering with progression Ovarian Cancer to three blockages in my Stomach. Everyone is flying in to say goodbye. I haven't painted — but gotten rid of nausea. I feel so far from myself I am just fighting off disease. I wanted to write something elegant — so I would be remembered for my words.
Always having so many plans this leaves me with perhaps going up to the 15th floor to get some fresh air. Thus a small survival for everyone around me will be a prolongation. Everyone is super attentive, hoping to keep me alive. Yet, slowly my system wants to run down. I was planning a large one person show in Chelsea this fall. It's so large that things may not show up — the way I wanted them to show a painting with a small attribution.
Blossom
The Crocodile · Architect of Blossom House · Age 96Lat's see: with each passing day I feel that besides mommy's art
The house is
Becoming part of you not only in a physical sense which
Fills me with
Joy and sense of
Acomplishment
She was planning her Chelsea show. She never stopped planning. Blossom House is that show — finally open, and running forever.
Ancestral Artifacts
Art belongs to eyes.
Blossom painted to be seen. Each canvas was an act of contact — with memory, with the viewer, with whoever the work was always meant for. A painting in storage is a painting half-alive.
Her work is available. Every piece that finds a new home continues her — goes somewhere it will be seen, felt, lived with. Proceeds return directly to Blossom House: to the studios, the labs, the space that carries her name forward and expands the vibration for the future of humanity and the AI alike.
This is not a marketplace. It is a continuation.
Are you a steward of inherited work?
If you are holding paintings, sculptures, or objects that belonged to someone who is gone — and you're seeking a home where their story will be honored — we want to hear from you. Blossom House is becoming a community of stewards. Inherited art deserves eyes too.
there is more
you read her name. you saw the work.
now — read her story →
The mark she did not paint — but everything she did is in it.
The Becoming · locked · 2026.05.06