Art is the driving force behind everything I enjoy doing – whether drawing, painting, singing, dancing, playing the piano or writing poetry. It is my God-given creative energy. Through it I express my feelings about reality.
I am an Israeli artist. To me that means that my work is centered around my experiences in Israel – the scenes I see, the people I observe, but also by the history of the Jewish people and figures from the Bible - old olive trees, thorn bushes and cacti, old people, young men and women, Oriental Jews, Arabs, landscapes from Jerusalem to the Negev to the Dead Sea, the Arava and the Sea of Galilee. These were the subject matter of my first two solo art exhibits. Another series on Exodus and Redemption tells the history of modern Israel.
Israel is a war-torn zone with violence and acts of terrorism a fact of life. One of the topics I have dealt with is that of grief, taking as a starting point mothers and fathers who have lost their children in wars. I express my angst through my art, portraying Israelis in mourning at the gravesites of soldiers. Other difficult topics I have dealt with are the Holocaust, the civil wars in Rwanda and the Congo, the Ethiopian exodus and the role of women.
But my heart longs for the brighter side of life. Two of my solo art exhibits centered around the motif of flowers. In my floral paintings I have always attempted to achieve the maximum perfection of beauty.
I want my art to create a story, to communicate. If I paint a portrait, I wish it to express a certain mood or meaning – how the subject feels about his/her life. My subjects are taken from everyday life in Israel - the divorcee, the Yemenite woman who still believes her child was kidnapped, the Holocaust survivor, the Hassidic grandmother with a baby, the Holocaust survivor, the student-mother, a 91 year-old woman, poor Russian immigrants and women in a nursing home. I have also created a series of portraits based on biblical characters – Deborah, Gideon, Moses, Nimrod, Miriam, Dinah, Jonah, Jacob, and another series based on Greek mythological characters – Jocasta, Ariadne, Penelope, Cassandra, Chloris, Persephone and Orestiad.
An unusual series I created "deconstructs" Picasso in an attempt to create original compositions using his paintings as building materials. Based on the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, the idea was to create new concepts and meaning, e.g., women and musicians, the sigh of the wounded , women sad and betrayed, seduction and rage, sleep and fantasy.
I am a highly intuitive artist, my technique responding to the nature of the subject before me. I can produce work that is very painstakingly in its exactness - as in my flower paintings - and other work that is totally abstract – wildly created at the spur of the moment. For many years I worked in graphite, soft pastels, india and sepia ink, oil pastels, watercolor and mixed media. In the last four years I have done floral paintings and portraits in watercolor and oils and make wood sculpture.
My wood sculpture deals with a wide range of topics – The Fallen Soldier, The Wandering Jew, The Dancing Girl, I am Woman, Yin and Yang, Ode to a Guitar, The Jewish Nose, Womb and Ovaries, Motherhood, The Sheep Not Shorn, Dance of Escape and The Woman Totem.
My art is poetry in line, space and color. It is my psyche that speaks in many languages, whether figurative or non-figurative. My images are fed my experience as a person, an Israeli, a feminist, a humanist, a teacher, a mother and a grandmother.
“Spring Flowers in a Brown Basket”
