(K)nights of the Round Panel

 A little over a year ago I had an exhibition in the iconic Haifa gallery "Step Inn".  It's a one man's labor of love to create a ripple effect in the run-down 'hood of ours, located right in the middle of the stairs leading from us to Lower City. 
The gallery opens for short lived pop-up exhibitions spanning three days only, and sometimes hosts other events on the stairs such as artisan market or a green day in which people plant some shrubs and flowers along the stairs. There are also sporadic movie screenings. 
The space is special, tiny and cave-like, as can be seen in the photo below. 

The owner, Joseph Cory, is an eco-architect who works with sustainables. A man with vision and great energy and optimism. And he thought it would be perfect to show my round panels, mostly on plywood and some other mysterious materials here and there. The exhibition was lovely. Joseph has the magic and imagination to recreate the gallery for every new exhibition, and it worked this time as well. 
We chose 7 works, as the works are somewhat large and the space small it was just enough. 
Most of them are sgraffito/engraved onto the plywood, two were oil paintings. 

And as you entered the gallery it looked like stars of the solar system floating in the air ever so gracefully. 

I would certainly like to continue making large round panels, but they do take up a lot of space in my little apartment/studio and I hardly ever hang or show any of them to my visitors. 
One work I made in haste didn't get to be included in the show because I found it a little too different:

It's actually very similar to a painting on ordinary canvas that I left behind in New York.

Beauty is a Story Untold

 

Would we always recognize something as beautiful? What if its former beauty has faded? Why is the world still obsessed with beauty? (Bodies, clothes, cars, places.) What happened to beauty in art? It definitely went through major transformations through the centuries. 

Would you know it if it passed you by?
Here are some stories about my encounters with it. 

OK, that one above was clear. Maybe snow too. But what about a rotting fence? Broken stairs overgrown with weed? ... A highway?... People sitting in the train? 
What is beauty really - is it just what we see? I think it's what I feel. 
A feeling takes over that is much stronger than the visual effect. The feeling says dig, there's something hidden here. 

There is beauty in everything. You just have to notice. Then, paint it. 

Define "Interesting Times"

 Back in Haifa for already a few months, back to my old routine of going to protests when I can (can't right now; forbidden out of safety concerns) and for the rest in the studio. As nothing much has changed, and we are still in the midst of the most wicked nightmare, I can only add my voice to the diminishing choir that sings stop-this-madness, and then turn to art making by default. 
I make art because it is my way of speaking to the world about that which cannot be spoken about. 
All around here people in the art world were trying to make art and show art about the "situation". We have a "situation" for as long as I can remember. So many lives lost and for what? The same people you hate today and wish them dead, can be your best friends tomorrow. 
I say that art isn't about making comments on everyday life. That's for the columnists in the papers. 
I go back to what I care about - color, space, forms, relationships, the story, the level of involvement, of fascination and awe, then painting over and over again until I am happy. 
The first works are still about New York and vicinity:

Then I landed in Israel finally... in my mind and soul. And shortly after started to discover Haifa - as if I do not live here 15 years already.

 I take walks, climb stairs (many!), peep into private back yards and discover that nature is not that far away. In the years I;ve been living here, trees have grown, small turned into big, shrubbery bacame tiny forest, and when I walk into the wadi's, dry riverbeds (they get wet in winter), I find with a spark of imagination I can feel like it's a real forest. 

With the latest attacks reaching as far as my town, the tactics has to be modified. I take walks on seemingly more quiet days hoping a siren will not catch me somewhere where I can't hide. But it can happen, and there's nothing you can do; am I supposed to sit at home all the time until the war is over? Ridiculous! So I wave my magic wand and quiet the outside noise as much as possible, so I can still work in my studio and produce quality art. I think art can protect from all evil. 

Art and War

 

Since September 2023 I'm staying with my friend in New York. It was a hard year in Israel and I decided it was time to leave for my usual two-months-away, and then the angel of death descended upon the region and started his ominous tour de force, still going on as I am writing these words. 
So I stayed. For now. For a while longer, until they stop figthing. Which turns out to be wishful thinking. But I am still wishing. 
Here in New York, apart from some heavy rain in September, and first snow as late as mid-January, life still flows with relative ease. I am painting in the little studio I have created in the bedroom where I'm staying - a tabletop that needed to be cleared, and nothing more. Packages arrive from art stores, and I am busy painting away, in oil, though occasionally doing a quick sketch in a library or cafe. Suspended in mid-air, draped in uncertainty about the rest of my life, wondering if I can easily move to another country, or just continue traveling to wherever will have me, and hard questions about the future of that country I happen to be born in, and therefore seemingly attached to, somehow. 
But I manage to live in this time bubble, protected from all evil, and pretending I do not have a ticket to go back later in February. Painting subjects vary, I believe that my life - my worries and joys, troubles and accidents, love and passion and observation and fascination, all that goes into what I do. Always. So, the light in the tunnel, and not at the end of it, is subject of a lot of my recent work. 
Live through it, drive through it, see it all, remain myself. 

Last pair below, juxtaposed Florida (Everglades) and New York

I got into the oil business

And did it do me good! Oil painting, good old stuff.
No more papers, framing, cutting glass, just sometimes stretching canvas, and usually I find them on the street or a friend gives me some.
Soetimes it's as fast as a painting a day... and then I get stuck with one painting that doesn't want to sort itself out for a while. 
30 weeks onto the protest that shook Israel, we seem to be stuck as well. But we are determined and will not give up. 

Mostly small works; all between30x40 to 50x70 cm

The Quest For Democracy

 

Oil on canvas, 29x43 cm
scene from the road on the way to the first protest in Tel Aviv this year

That we have no democracy here is well known. Israel is a complicated case and I will not get into the details of it now. lately the new troublesome government dropped quite a game changer into the arena, and the bitterly surprised people are rushing to the streets for over three months now, before the flood destroys whatever is left.
They want to destroy the very little bits of sanity we still have, shift the power balance, ruin our economy and freedom (yes, freedom for Jews only so far, so maybe now, I hope, this will change).
I am doing my share a little bit, carrying signs against the occupation and for a better legislation, a constitution with human rights and equality for all. Nobody knows how this will end. Our nerves are stretched, it's filtering into our dreams and daily lives, while violence escalates on all fronts, inside and outside, and the Palestinians as always suffer the most. 
I have been painting the rallies and marches in this period, as well as "escapades" into another time and place. New York seems so far away now, though I am always invited, but how can I leave now? My heart will surely stay here as long as it's not over. 
I hope we'll rise once again, this time with a better understanding what "democracy" means, including the Arabs as equal citizens, freedom to Palestine, possible peace, but is it possible even within our own nation? With such a huge divide and hatred between right and left, orthodox and secular?

Oil on canvas, 35x50 cm

Oil on canvas, 40x50 cm

Oil on canvas, 30x40 cm

Even this little oil, a scene from America, somehow corresponds with the feelings of many Israelis nowadays. 
But somewhere, somewhen, waiting for me, this exists.

Oil on panel, 17x27 cm