Artist Statement
I see myself as an infinite mind. I have the body and the world around it, to explore possibilities of experience.
Nothing is more satisfying than finding the energies of who we really are.
Making art is my best way of finding these energies. They are endlessly curious and inventive.
My work as an artist is a pilgrimage inwards.
Most of the artists who work today do big works. There is power in size. But there is also power in reaching deep and allowing the deepest energies of ourselves come through and be expressed.
I make very small pictures. If you look at them from close up, you can experience those energies and it is like meeting with your deeper self. If this happens, these small pictures will become intimate friends.
Nothing is more satisfying than finding the energies of who we really are.
Making art is my best way of finding these energies. They are endlessly curious and inventive.
My work as an artist is a pilgrimage inwards.
Most of the artists who work today do big works. There is power in size. But there is also power in reaching deep and allowing the deepest energies of ourselves come through and be expressed.
I make very small pictures. If you look at them from close up, you can experience those energies and it is like meeting with your deeper self. If this happens, these small pictures will become intimate friends.
CV
I grew up in Israel before it was a country. When I was three and a half I lost my father who fought in the war of independence.
In the new state I studied in the best art school of the time and became a graphic designer. I did many projects, among them about two hundred book covers and numerous other designs.
During this time I fell in love with illustration. Before long I illustrated for most of Israel’s publishers, magazines, newspapers and I also illustrated some 14 children’s books.
My love of illustration brought me to the US. My second client here was the New York Times. I continued working for them through some seventeen years. At times on a weekly basis and sometimes at least once a month. For some seven years I had a weekly illustration in the Wall Street Journal. I also illustrated some additional 28 children’s books.
My illustrations participated in many exhibitions here and abroad. My children’s illustrations received prizes and recognition here and internationally.
During this time I pursued the study of meditation with the Chinese Buddhist master the late Sheng-yen. In the twelve intensive years that I spent as his student, my view of life and the world changed, and this lead me to my third career.
At 58 I studied at NYU to become an art therapist.
For another fourteen years I was an art therapist, showing people, young and old, how to make art intuitively, how to decipher subconscious tendencies in their artworks and how to replace these tendencies with their authentic being.
It was a new way of doing art therapy and I wrote a book about it (Opening intuitive flow through artwork) that received many praises and has become a part of the recommended reading at the department of art therapy at NYU.
I also started a blog (IntuitiveFlow.org), in which I described the use of this approach. This blog is still going on, and through the years has received two prizes.
I was invited to write about this in several magazines and in a chapter for a book, and I was interviewed several times.
A progressive illness made me stop practicing art therapy and compelled me to stay home most of the time.
Throughout my three careers I kept making art. I participated in artist’s run gallery in Milford, Pennsylvania and showed regularly. I participated in several curated shows there and at Gallery 440 in Brooklyn, and I had a solo show at Gallery Rosvita Tittel in Koln, Germany, where My show was written about in the local papers and I was visited by the curator of one of the local museums.
This sums up my past art career.
In the present, I am making more art than ever before. Standing and walking causes severe pain, so I work while sitting. I have a room in which I make my art.
Nowadays, my art is drawing driven. The line has a rich meaning to me. I make my lines with watercolor and the ways in which the density of the color changes and the pigment particles disperse, and the way the edges of the lines become lines on their own, all these are so alive and rich for me. Making them has become my joy and the beginning of every artwork.
I fell in love with the use of the Prismacolor colored pencils. The cores are soft as oil pastels. Pressing hard when I paint with them creates a layer that is more pleasant to me than acrylic paints. It is more like oil paints but without the chemicals.
The pencils enable me to keep the drawing untouched and make the impression that the paint was laid before the drawing was done.
I draw and paint intuitively. I allow the deepest parts of myself to talk. It is a joyful process of connecting with the deepest energies that are the essence of who we are.
I am starting my fourth career now. And hope to grow pleasantly. This is the best time of my life so far.
In the new state I studied in the best art school of the time and became a graphic designer. I did many projects, among them about two hundred book covers and numerous other designs.
During this time I fell in love with illustration. Before long I illustrated for most of Israel’s publishers, magazines, newspapers and I also illustrated some 14 children’s books.
My love of illustration brought me to the US. My second client here was the New York Times. I continued working for them through some seventeen years. At times on a weekly basis and sometimes at least once a month. For some seven years I had a weekly illustration in the Wall Street Journal. I also illustrated some additional 28 children’s books.
My illustrations participated in many exhibitions here and abroad. My children’s illustrations received prizes and recognition here and internationally.
During this time I pursued the study of meditation with the Chinese Buddhist master the late Sheng-yen. In the twelve intensive years that I spent as his student, my view of life and the world changed, and this lead me to my third career.
At 58 I studied at NYU to become an art therapist.
For another fourteen years I was an art therapist, showing people, young and old, how to make art intuitively, how to decipher subconscious tendencies in their artworks and how to replace these tendencies with their authentic being.
It was a new way of doing art therapy and I wrote a book about it (Opening intuitive flow through artwork) that received many praises and has become a part of the recommended reading at the department of art therapy at NYU.
I also started a blog (IntuitiveFlow.org), in which I described the use of this approach. This blog is still going on, and through the years has received two prizes.
I was invited to write about this in several magazines and in a chapter for a book, and I was interviewed several times.
A progressive illness made me stop practicing art therapy and compelled me to stay home most of the time.
Throughout my three careers I kept making art. I participated in artist’s run gallery in Milford, Pennsylvania and showed regularly. I participated in several curated shows there and at Gallery 440 in Brooklyn, and I had a solo show at Gallery Rosvita Tittel in Koln, Germany, where My show was written about in the local papers and I was visited by the curator of one of the local museums.
This sums up my past art career.
In the present, I am making more art than ever before. Standing and walking causes severe pain, so I work while sitting. I have a room in which I make my art.
Nowadays, my art is drawing driven. The line has a rich meaning to me. I make my lines with watercolor and the ways in which the density of the color changes and the pigment particles disperse, and the way the edges of the lines become lines on their own, all these are so alive and rich for me. Making them has become my joy and the beginning of every artwork.
I fell in love with the use of the Prismacolor colored pencils. The cores are soft as oil pastels. Pressing hard when I paint with them creates a layer that is more pleasant to me than acrylic paints. It is more like oil paints but without the chemicals.
The pencils enable me to keep the drawing untouched and make the impression that the paint was laid before the drawing was done.
I draw and paint intuitively. I allow the deepest parts of myself to talk. It is a joyful process of connecting with the deepest energies that are the essence of who we are.
I am starting my fourth career now. And hope to grow pleasantly. This is the best time of my life so far.