ITS NO SECRET; SOME PEOPLE ARE deeply inspired when they ride a bicycle. Albert Einstein, when asked how he arrived at his theory of relativity, answered, "Oh that... I thought of that while riding my bicycle." Proof of Einstein's love for the bicycle can be seen in a classic photograph from the archives of the University of California that captures the bushy-haired scientist wheeling across the red-tiled plaza at Stanford University with a look of amused serenity on his one-of-a-kind face. Playfully arcing into what looks like a lazy-eight turn, he appears more akin to a ten-year-old boy heading to the swimming hole on a sultry summer day than a world-class scholar off to teach physics to a class of freshmen.

Many people have been bitten by the bicycles near-hypnotic ability to inspire thought while slowly pedaling along a country road or careening down a congested city street. Author Henry Miller, musician John Lennon, writer H.G. Wells, former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, astronomer Carl Sagan and President John F. Kennedy were all known to grab their bicycles when the world was closing in on them and go for a spin to keep the worries of the world at bay.

Henry Miller, in his novel Bicycles and Other Friends, writes about his mother's ongoing distaste for the young Millers attention to his first love, who he preened daily and adorned with finery and frills: a red, fat-tired, one-speed department store cruiser bike that allowed Miller his taste of freedom in the hills of Califonia.

We bring some inspiration to Month this year in the form of paint created by New York City artist Taliah Lempert. A self-described bike fiend, Lempert is the owner of several bicycles which she regularly rides in and around the New York metro area, basking in the opportunity to get out of her studio for a few hours and taste the streets of the City. Riding bicycles is just one of Lemperts passions. Her real love is painting classic bicycles in oil paint on canvases stretched as large as 40 by 60 inchesnearly life size. Her work has been displayed throughout the New York metropolitan area and featured in several national magazines.

The 33-year-old Lempert became passionate about bicycling and art as a youngster growing up in upstate New York. She views bicycles as more than mere transportation she sees them as movable sculpture, as evocative as the human figure with their amazing lines, worn patinas, and beautiful curves. Trained a painter of the human figure, Lempert made the shift to painting bicycles inpart because of the challenge involved in capturing the personality of each bicycle—in color and line—as they stand alone.

In her travels around New York City she is constantly on the lookout for cycles with unique histories or unusual lines. One of her favorite bicycles, of which she has created several paintings, is her own 1961 Spaceliner, made by Sears and Roebuck. The streamlined Spaceliner exuded the 1960s fascination with speed and light.

Because of their large size, the paintings are impressive because each one contains only one bicycle against a semi-neutral background, rather than the cityscape background one would expect from an inhabitant of New York City.

When asked if a photo of ones favorite bicycle can be sent to her to be painted Lempert quickly asserts that she will not create paintings from slides or photographs: She must have the bicycle in front of her. "Ship it to me," she casually states, adding that "The bike shop down the street will uncrate it, build it and ship it back to you when I am done."

She says that she needs to "know" the bike—whether that means sitting with the bicycle in her studio and sketching it from several different angles or making quick studies of the bike with paint using bold brush strokes.

Taking her subject for a short ride down one of Brooklyn's busy streets or over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan's Lower East Side, Lempert garners inspiration from the way the bike handles, which then sets her imagination in motion regarding how she will paint the bike.

Sometimes she is moved to splash paint alà Jackson Pollock, the outrageous abstract expressionist—on the background of a painting alluding to the era that the bicycle was most popular. In this case she refers to the cool 1960s. With other paintings, she breaks the space up in blocks of smooth, lusty contemporary colors in an ode to Mark Rothko or adds long shadows that harken back to the haunting depictions of modern life by DeChirico, the Italian surrealist who captured the mechanical age and all its dehumanizing effects.

No matter what the painted background, it is the intense focus on the individual bicycle that gives Lemperts paintings a unique and definitive look into the objects essential qualifies. As a result, she allows her subject to speak to her, rather than force the subject, thus giving to the brilliance of each bicycle indelibly inscribed on canvas.