An imagined conversation (or even an argument) between different paintings that were created around the same time. The paintings speak with one another as well as to and about the painter who made them.

Words spoken at the opening event for the exhibition Pulse, in an effort to shed light on the different bodies of work on the gallery walls.

Eighteen small landscape paintings on the gallery wall, with the large painting Swing 1 among them נד נד.

Installation view of the exhibition “Pulse” at Mirvach Gallery, Kibbutz Harduf, 2022 (photo by Alon Levite)

Diagonal hillside with brushstrokes of thick paint, and a light image of mountains shrouded in clouds in the background

Oil on wood, 14X20cm/5.5″X8″

The small landscape paintings (from this series): We represent the essence of your painterly experience – its DNA, as it were: direct observation. Because of the short time that a specific light falls on the chosen segment of the landscape, you need to muster full presence and concentration. Even though you return day after day to the same small painting, a powerful encounter occurs each time anew. Your sense of wonder at the mass of color that make up the trees and hillside is translated directly into brushstrokes – actually, even before you begin working, the rocky terrain looks to you like a collection of strokes and marks, like a painting.

The large paintings (from the series Land of Painting): We take the experience that you described and bring it to another level, in which the painter continues with direct observation but also thinks, plans,

Galilee landscape from the point of view of a figure swinging on a swing, her feet and paint-stained pants in the foreground, with hands clutching swing chains at the lower edges

Swing 2, 2019, oil on canvas, 140 X 60 cm/55″ X 23.6″

Sky and earth viewed from a swing in two vertically adjoined canvases

Swing 1, 2019, oil on canvas, 2 parts, 140 X 60 cm/55″ X 23.6″ (total)

dreams, pondering her place in the world. The image of her legs and feet is the viewpoint from her eyes looking downward, while the lower part of the body connects with the world. In those small landscapes of yours, the painter views the world opposite her and separate from her; she is on one side and the landscape is on the other. Yet in the Swing paintings, for example, the figure of the painter flies toward the world, almost bursting into it, together with the viewer. This is not a romantic or naïve outlook, however. It incorporates within it a fragmentary and disjointed awareness as well, since the head of the figure remains outside the composition. In addition, the two versions of Swing even raise questions about the bond versus the rift between heaven and earth.

Bright and dark greens on pinkish background describe wooded slope in pre-sunset light

2022, oil on canvas on wood, 14X20 cm/5.5″X8″

Hillside, shadows, rocks and trees in muted tones and choppy brushstrokes, with dark slope and trees in foreground at bottom

2022, oil on laminate, 10X16 cm/4″X6″

The small paintings: In the deep and direct experience involved in our making, the eye of the painter does make a connection, a primal and authentic bond between her and the world. Without all that unnecessary sophistication!

Vertical path in warm tones with details of small rocks, at top and bottom pairs of barefoot feet walk toward one another

Path, 2022, oil on canvas, 50X180 cm/19.5″X71″

 

The painting Path: You keep arguing about “the landscape and I”, The world and me.” You forgot that there are a few other people besides “I, me, I.” My painting shows the potential for a meeting between that I and someone else, while revealing the difficulty involved in that encounter. It is a long path filled with stones. Will the two figures traverse it? By the way, the painter wasn’t even sure if I’m finished, but decided to include me in the exhibition anyway.  I can also share that she had planned to paint the rocks and weeds that border on the path from both sides, but in the end chose to leave some of the canvas on these edges as is, except for a thin layer of paint. This affirms the notion that painting itself is a path, painting is a way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos: Dror Miler and Alon Levite