It's in the Cards

A few days ago, "Radar Art Event" was celebrated in Haifa - Hadar quarter and vicinity. It comprised mainly open studios, some art venues and museums and small exhibitions here and there.
I opened my studio as usual, and put a pile of postcard-size watercolors on a table.

I started making postcards for the Fresh Paint art fair that takes place here once a year. You give the postcards and in return get one ticket to visit the art fair. 
I haven't been to Fresh Paint for two years, thanks to Covid and its various restrictions. But I continue to make postcards or small-size watercolors all the time in my studio. It may be a study for larger work, and sometimes I really do get bigger oils or watercolors done after the sketch. But they have a right to exist and shine on their own right. 

I usually like to draw the view from the passenger's seat while on the road to somewhere. Cars are a favorite subject, or just road trips. As are train stations, subways, traffic and crowds. 

Broken Visions

Two of the last images I made in France before I left there in September:

Yes I know, it's been a few months, summer turned to autumn turned to winter and broken glass does not leave my mind, even here and now in Haifa.
I still work from the old sketches and images of Bourbonne but I also started to integrate BG into the local scene. It just pops up here so very often inviting me to take a look, take a picture and see the world differently.
Haifa is beautiful sometimes with its unintentional coloring against clear blue skies, such as here:

But I do prefer it in the darker corners, like the market place that still needs a lot of cleaning and seems to me always in total chaos, set aside its liveliness and raw beauty in places; or a half abandoned office building where people still come for their shopping,  bored doorman at the entrance, a surprising slow elevator to nowhere,  and a church for the caregivers who come to work here all the way from the Philippines or elsewhere.
This is the square just before that building, drawn with glass markers on - well - glass.

I did this scene a few times, this one is pencil

But it is still new, the idea of Haifa broken glass, and I am studying it and contemplating it and making space for new ideas.
Another take - on plexiglass - of the scene in France, by now I may have painted it 100 times or more from various angles.

The above work is oil paint and scratch/sgraffito, again that place in France as well as all of these recent watercolors.

Back to the Back Yard

Panorama - Back Yard, oil and engraving on plywood
30x170 cm, 2018

Like breathing in and breathing out, like the seasons coming and leaving, so does the painter go back to old favorite themes to check if anything has changed in theories, ideas, execution and style, or just because these old themes are still all around.
I like to travel and get away from my comfortable chair, but then when I am back, I am excited to be in my own studio at last, and create more significant work than just catch a glimpse of this and that on paper.
I love paper; give me a whole lot more or leave me stranded for a weekend in the paper department of the art store. But what is conceived in the quiet solitude and seclusion of the studio, after some brain picking and trial and error and a lot of tedious labor sometimes,  may be worth the while and toil when I proudly present a new piece that took some time to be born into the world.
My back yard went through some changes, as well as the indoors, but that's for another report later on. I took old sketches, drawings and watercolors to make this oddly stretched panorama 30x170 cm on plywood. For more convenience,  I divided the photo into three parts.

Jazz at the Corner

Fall colors on the balcony
markers

What do you know, summer is so much history by now, I'm all wrapped up and ready for the strange cold winter. Because it's not really winter, we forget how cold it can actually be.

In February I will have an exhibition in a gallery, and I still don't know what works will be shown. the idea is probably just to present myself to the public rather than choosing a theme, which is alright by me.

Khayat Orchard, oil on wood


Khayat Orchard, oil on wood

A lot of ideas are zooming in my head and not enough time and energy to perform. But I do manage to do some work. Recently I got into the habit of drawing the musicians in Cafe Hapina ("Corner Cafe") - where I had my "Khayat Orchard" solo exhibition two years ago.  They have jazz every Tuesday. The regular show belongs to Yair Loewenson, who hosts different musicians every week. 

The rest is silence. I have one or two surprises up my sleeve. Just wait a while longer.

Dances with Cranes

"Work in Progress"
oil on canvas, about 72x133 cm

Summertime, and the living is unbearable. Thinking about the guys out there on the scaffolding, building homes for the more fortunate,  helmets covering heads sweating away melting under the naked sun.
I have been a member of various groups monitoring safety at construction sites, and as much as the fight is taken seriously, nothing yet has changed in the statistics. People die building homes for us. People die unnecessarily, out of negligence,  carelessness or sheer cold decisions to cut expenses right there.
For my part, I hate building taking place nearby; the pleasure of the outside is gone; it's dirty, hard to breathe, noisy all day and when the work is done (Twenty-two floors on top of three commercial ones), will probably block my winter light in the morning-noon, which is all the light I have in winter. 
But hey, progress, cities, urban renewal and the like. I'm not against all that.
I found out the building site was actually a treasure den for interesting subjects to paint. The colors, blue-turquosie sky and yellow-orange cranes, bright red railings and yellow vests, sometimes a green arm of yet another crane, blue vertical lines of ladders. Celebration. And the human element - people doing physical work, they seem so elegant, young and full of energy, united in their  coordinated movement to create a rich, complex modern dance.
Then, I read a book that had a description of cranes in it. Not this kind of cranes, the real thing. And guess what, cranes are noisy, and they dance as well. And after their job is done they all migrate - a huge group of them, darkening the skies, hundreds of thousands of free birds keep going and going until they find a place to settle, winter or summer, same routine for thousands of years. Are we lucky to be people? Why do we threaten nature so much? How come the summers now are so much hotter than in my childhood?
Cranes do not need to be saved, but most of nature does. And people.

"Horsemen of the Apocalypse"
oil paint and scratching on plywood, 53x73 cm

Moon and Craneoil paint and scratching on plywood, 37 ⌀


watercolor, 18x12 cm

watercolor, 28x23 cm

watercolor, 46x31 cm

watercolor,  26x32 cm

watercolor, 47x29 cm

markers, 16x20 cm


markers, 15x20 cm

markers, 24x30 cm

The Old and the New
markers, 20x27 cm



Setting Sail
Watercolor, 30x47 cm

Out in the City of Haifa

Summertime. Leaves are dark green and grey. The light too cruel and direct, and I rise early to get before everybody else does to the nearby Binyamin Garden, a local green lung slowly turning into a charming spot. The people there, mainly Russian and Arabic speakers, hard working or unemployed, find their way into my paintings without ever noticing it. They go about their happy business with daily contentment. I am a temporary intruder.

These trees make a wonderful shade, may they live long and prosper. The rest of the garden is olives - not big enough yet.
Here is an oil painting I just finished. It's based on photos I took in winter. The color of the path is plain grey in reality.
Plywood 49x65 cm

Below is a small marker sketch of two cats. Following an idea I picked up on the web, I used watercolor paper prepared with gel medium. Strange results. The paint stays on the surface and doesn't sink in, so it can be moved around, like Winsor Newton promised their Pigment Markers would do if I used their own paper.

Another time same place, markers:

The card players, markers

At the end of the journey I go down to the market. This is Haifa, up or down. Down many stairs that lead me to the main street of our busy neighborhood Hadar.
And right before the market I notice these two beauties, so colorful I just have to draw them.

... and then you go down here.

Ah yes the market. Same street, two views.

Lower still. Downtown, Harbor street (Hanamal), on July 14th they had a cheerful French Revolution party.

A favorite spot downtown, not as colorful in reality but nice enough...