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

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. 

Oil and Water

Yes yes, do you hear the music playing?






pictures from opening night, and just an ordinary day at Hapina with my paintings all around

Better late than never - you are cordially invited to my new exhibition at the Corner Cafe (Hapina).  It will be on for another two weeks and change. Oil and Water just means the medium, in the most literal sense. No drawings, no markers.
It's already the second time I exhibit there, and I take it ever so lightly as I should a show in a cafe.
I had my share of gallery and museum shows in the past year, and why not go back to the one and only gallery in Haifa (well, sort of), now that they closed Gate 3 for good - oh, so sad.
Cafe Hapina, old faithful, still has Yair host the Tuesday night jazz event as well as a new initiative by Omer Ben David - also a jazz musician - called Jam Night. It is usually every other Thursday, people gather from all around and you never know what's going to happen, though after a while I noticed they too have an inclination towards well-known (yet well played) standards.
Jam night is using my drawings for the FB event cover photo. I must have become nearly official in sketching regularly at jazz nights - and other times - in this cafe.

So now I am making an oil painting using these last few sketches I made. The music it sweet in my veins and lifts me up and definitely contributes to the success of a sketch. I hope the painting is as good as some of these.