Some people like portraits made of themselves or family members. Others even have paintings made of their pets.
But what if you are fond (and we mean really fond) of your bicycle? Is there anyone who would actually paint a picture of it?
There is, and she's right here in Brooklyn.
Meet Taliah Lempert, bicycle portrait artist extraordinaire. She lives near the Williamsburg waterfront. The Williamsburg Bridge looms prominently outside her loft building on Broadway, which was a munitions factory during the Civil War.
Inside hand dozens of bikes she and her boyfriend own. A set of belt-drive wheels from the old factory still hang from the ceiling near a far wall.
"I started riding mostly to commute, and started painting bikes because that's what I was into," Lempert told BROOKLYN! " Bikes are really beautiful and they just catch my eye. I wtarted painting my own bikes, too."
Taliah is an avid track cyclist who competes at the kissena Park track in Queens, where she rides for the Kissena Cycling club, which she also helps sponsor. Recently she placed third in a club race, she said. She is also the 2000 New York State Champoin in the women's matched sprint. The competition has gotten a lot tougher in the past two years, though, she said.
She has been painting bikes for some seven years and shays she has done about 200 painting s so far. She's painted all kinds: from sleek tine-trial bikes with their extraordinarily exotic and unconventional frame curvatures, to the ornate lug work found on vintage road bikes. She also paints foldups,tandems, as well as 1950's balloon-tire cruisers, and mountain bikes.
Her paintings take her anywhere from a day to a week and half to do. She says she likes her paintings to be representative of her first impressions of a bike. One recent afternoon she was painting one of her own, a Bob Jackson track.


One of Lempert's Portraits