Born in Victoria in 1946, Rachel Berman’s paintings were exhibited at North Park, Fran Willis and Winchester Galleries — old, new and Modern — and in Toronto by the Ingram Gallery. But her artistry made its most intimate impact on those to whom she delivered — usually by bicycle, in the early hours of morning — envelopes stuffed with drawings, philosophy, calligraphy, rambling love letters and apt poetry that would burst open in a shower of rose petals on the breakfast table. “I thought I’d write one more note,” she began a letter to me some time ago, “certainly not the last. Ah! How can I explain my life? Should I? Save by beginning on a story there is no time to finish and might have no end. It involved so many ways of feeling that to others is inexplicable, a rigmarole of incomprehensible motives, misguided folly, perhaps simply hopeless reachings after what from the beginning was already lost, all the confused and indirect ways by which we come to a place light years from where we began and what does it mean to see all this feelingly?” (http://www.timescolonist.com/robert-amos-artist-embraced-darkness-and-light-1.1119272) I just wanted to give a little limelight to a wonderful woman who became a customer: Rachel Berman. She is an artist in Victoria that was inclined to draw us a sketch of her first bike she bought – a Townie. We were tickled pink. A few weeks later, she realised that the Townie wasn’t quite for her. She then discovered the Amsterdam and fell in love with it. Again, we opened the door one morning to find a sketch of her new bike under our door. Flashfoward a little to a brain-searing session of North Park trying to decide on a t-shirt design; which we had been debating on over the prior year (seriously). Suddenly, we had the epiphany to ask Rachel Berman if we could use her sketch. She was more than thrilled to accommodate us! We have tacked a little version of it at the top of our pages. Thank you, Rachel! (http://www.northparkbikeshop.com/2009/06/rachel-berman/)