VIVID COLORS DANCE ACROSS the canvases of painter Judith Evan Goldstein, colors that suggest joyous optimism and celebration.

“I call it choreography on my canvas,” said Goldstein, who divides her time between New Rochelle and Boca Raton. “My invisible witnesses guide me to depict my childhood, my people.”

Jewish-themed art is just one way the optimistic Goldstein, 74, celebrates the daily miracle of being alive.

Years of conservatory training on piano, a career as a music therapist and composer, a rich family life, a late-in-life art career, a busy schedule as a public speaker — all of these achievements have been informed by the simple fact that more than 60 years ago, Goldstein survived the Holocaust through a fortuitous stroke of luck.

The compulsion to make a lasting mark on the world is typical of Holocaust survivors, according to Goldstein.

And it is perhaps even more common among child survivors, a designation whose specificity she embraces.

“We all missed our childhoods, but we also just had to catch up on life,” she said.

By just about any standard, Goldstein has caught up. Her paintings are in the collections of numerous museums, including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and she is currently putting the final touches on works for a one-woman exhibit at the St. Petersburg (Florida) Museum of Art. Several of Goldstein’s most recent chamber music works will be performed in an upcoming South Florida concert.

The distinctive modes of Eastern European Jewish music are a deliberate presence in Goldstein’s music, a tribute of sorts to her childhood in Vilna, Lithuania.

“It also has a flavor that connects with Spanish music,” she explained. “It connects with that expulsion, the influences that come from both Oriental and Western sounds.”

Goldstein’s own expulsion began when the Nazis invaded Lithuania, interrupting what had until then been an idyllic childhood. Nine-year-old Judith and her family were forced into the tense, bomb-punctuated confinement of the Jewish ghetto.

When it was liquidated two years later, her brother Meir and their music-loving, engineer father were taken away, the latter never to return alive.

Judith’s miraculous survival occurred when she, her mother and her aunt stood in a line of women, waiting for the SS guard to determine which females were the right age to work in the concentration camps and which were too young or too old and would be shot immediately.

Despite her mother’s frantic efforts to make Judith look mature, the guard sent her to the children’s line.

But before she could move, the guard’s attention was called elsewhere and she managed to slip into the crowd of older women.

For the next two years, Judith and her female relatives survived a series of slave labor camps. When the war ended, the family was reunited and spent three years in a refugee camp in the American zone in Germany, waiting for emigration papers.

It was during this time that Goldstein became serious about music, studying piano at the local conservatory. Struggling to adjust to civilian life after having been robbed of her childhood, Judith found refuge in music, a technique she would later explore as a music therapist.

“In those days I didn’t consider it therapy because I didn’t know what that was,” she said with a laugh.

In 1949, the family immigrated to America, where Judith eventually married a fellow survivor, Harry, and received a master’s degree in music from Columbia University. The couple raised two children and remains close with her brother Meir, who also lives in New Rochelle.

“I wanted to record my childhood experiences, but instead of writing, I chose the vehicles of music and art,” said Goldstein, explaining her need to compose music and paint. “I also adore watching ballet, but these are the forms that come most naturally to me. What I hear, I can paint; what I see, I can compose.”

A member of several child survivor groups, Goldstein also spreads her message through speaking engagements at schools around the New York metropolitan area.

“I think it’s very important for children to know the hazards of hate,” she said. She sometimes shares a song she wrote about mutual respect, “This Earth Is For You and Me,” with her much-younger listeners.

“I want to ask them, ‘Why don’t we make the best of what’s on our earth, instead of killing?’ ” said Goldstein, ever the optimist.

“There’s so much talent around. We should use it in a positive way.”

Her own story, she added, carries a universal message of redemption. Even having witnessed the destruction of her family, her community and her whole European Jewish world, Goldstein said, “I want to let people know you can overcome being sad, you can overcome anything.

“Today, I’m a very happy person.” WJC