A different kind of art experience

Wow. It’s been awhile! Sorry for the unplanned hiatus. It’s been a crazy few weeks here with everyone taking turns getting sick and I have been working hard at a new project….But I'm back!

I want to share with you the amazing exhibit I got to see. I know that I usually promote female artists, but thankfully there have been A LOT of amazing men out there who inspire as well. In fact, the three artists who have inspired my work more than any others are men. Mark Rothko and his amazing color fields; Picasso with his genius and ability to constantly change and re-invent himself artistically;  and Chuck Close, who got me addicted to grids and the ability to combine realism and abstract.

But, today is about a different artist- Van Gogh. I don’t think I have truly appreciated him enough before seeing this exhibit. His canvases do come to life. The colors and emotion in his paintings are amazing! I have been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, and I have loved Van Gogh’s work, but this exhibit brought me into his work, made me feel a part of his art and his world. It was an amazing experience.

I am talking about the "Van Gogh Alive" experience. -

http://grandeexhibitions.com/vangogh

It is a new kind of exhibit - one that I am all for.  Now, I LOVE museums! I mean, I really, really LOVE them. I can spend days (and I have!) walking around museums. You can taste all kinds of art in one place; be inspired not only by the artist’s work, but thanks to amazing curators, sometimes I feel like I am getting a peek into the artist’s head. I find it inspiring to see others’ creative thought processes. It is fascinating to me.

But this is a completely different experience. If you go into the link above and click on video, you will see what I mean. Walking though this exhibit, you feel like you are inside Van Gogh’s paintings. Not only are his paintings all around you, but inspiring words from letters he had written are displayed across the ceiling and floor, along with beautiful classical music. 

One of these quotes -"I wish they 
would just take me as I am"
was displayed with all of his self 

portraits.

So, if you get a chance to see this exhibit- go. I saw it in Tel Aviv, but I don’t know where it is traveling to next but it is a great way to see art in a new atmosphere. Even if you are not a huge art lover like me, you would still enjoy the experience.

I will leave you with some more Van Gogh quotes to inspire, and wishing you all a peaceful, loving and relaxing weekend.

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

“If you hear a voice within you say „you cannot paint“, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.”

“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

“It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.”

“...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?”

“Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.”

“Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, ‘You can't do a thing’. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all.”

“At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”

“Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”

Vincent van Gogh― 

Celebrating Female Artists

This week, I hosted an evening for all my students, where we celebrated woman and creativity and watched the movie "Who Does She Think She Is".

It got me thinking, again, about all the amazing female artists out there, past and present; and how we have to encourage and celebrate them. The fact that so many of my students related to this film and felt that they were discouraged from creating art in life or didn’t have time to do it until later on in life, shows just how important this film is.  If you haven’t seen this movie already, I highly suggest you do. And if you are a creative person and have that spark and longing in your soul to create - then PLEASE do! Don’t wait! Don’t let life, society, spouses or children get in the way of you expressing yourself. Draw, dance, paint, doodle, write, sketch…just do it!! Do it for you.

In light of these thoughts and that evening,  I would like to share  with you  an artist whose work I was privileged to have seen  at the MOMA this past summer- Elizabeth Catlett. While at the museum, I took a picture of her sculpture because I was so moved by it.  I wanted to learn more about her.  When I looked her up I was blown away by her and her work. When I showed my mom the picture she said that if I was a sculptor, that is how she imagines my art would look!

Here are the pictures that I took at the museum

And here is the link to the picture online at the MOMA- 

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?

MOMA Collection- Mother and Child

Personally, I like my picture more!

Elizabeth Catlett was an American born, Mexican sculptor and printmaker. Her art celebrated the heroic strength and endurance of African American and Mexican working class women. This sculptor "Mother and Child" was completed during the year she returned to sculpting after the birth of her third son. This does remind me a bit of myself! What is it about that third child? My paintings and style also really developed after the birth of my third child- my daughter. That’s when I started to paint more regularly again, and to develop my style.  The emotion in this sculpture reminds me of my work in the fact that it captures that beautiful fleeting moment between mother and child. I guess that's why I fell so in love with this work of art!

Here is another link to the sculpture online-

http://www.jonathanboos.com/artworks/artworks.php?id=38

The last sentence in the above link to her work is so insightful and meaningful and I love it:

“This tender and protective embrace suggests the vulnerability of a mother but does not diminish her strength"!!!

 Here are some more images of her work that I found online and fell in love with.Enjoy!

New Painting

Looking Up…

I just finished another oil painting in my Tree Series. I am very happy with the process which I went through painting this. These paintings have helped me deal with my life the past 3 years; and as I have grown, I feel my paintings, my technique and my style has also grown. I painted this tree in spirals, as usual, but notice the spirals start small at the top, and grow larger toward the bottom of the painting. I wanted to give the feeling of looking up and through the tree; up to the light in the sky. The sun was coming through the branches and shining on me. I wanted to capture that feeling.

Next week is my 40^th birthday and as I look back on my life and where I am today, I feel very blessed and lucky.  I just read in "The Element" by Ken Robinson, that lucky people often make their luck because of attitudes. We all create and shape the realities of our own lives to an extraordinary extent. If you just wait for good things to happen, then you will be lucky to encounter them. He says that our ability to look at situations in a different way and take advantage of situations that come along is what makes the difference. This is why I say that I am both lucky and blessed. I have done lot of soul searching these past years and have tried to work on myself. One of the things that I try to do is to see the world differently; to be open to people, to connect, not to close myself off or be afraid of the world. When you make a conscious decision to be open and to connect, it is amazing the things that will happen to you and the people you will meet. So I guess that is the lucky part. The part I have brought to my world by opening my heart and eyes to things and people I didn’t before. But, I am also blessed. Blessed, because I do believe that even if our own actions bring the blessings into our lives, we are blessed because of our actions. I believe in a higher energy that looks over me. That is what brings these events together through our actions. It is not random. I am blessed with so many things from the people in my life to the way my life is unfolding. So I would like to start this New Year with a blessing to everyone-

May your actions bring you luck and may you be blessed!

.

My Firstborn

17 years ago today, my first child was born - I became a parent - I became a mommy. I looked into my child’s eyes for the first time and knew my life was changed forever.

So much has happened in the last 17 years. He has grown from my baby to a young man. A young man learning for his driver’s license. A young man with a job. But a young man who still needs his mommy sometimes.

I decided to re-share today the drawing I did of Effi 2 years ago as it reflects the same feelings I feel today.

In this drawing I was dealing with my emotions of my child growing into a man. Spiraling away from me into his own spiral. Changing and growing but the center is still with me. It was suppose to be an image of him today but as I was drawing I realized that I was putting in a lot of what he looked like as a child. It was a strange experience. I meant to draw one thing, but my mind and emotions, memories and love, changed it into something else. It is how I see him, and probably, only me. It is my Effi. I see the man in front of me, but I still see in him the child that was. My baby, my son.


Happy Birthday Effi!

Teaching the Art of Mandalas to Kids

     One of the classes I teach in my studio is to 6-7 year olds. I love this class. Well, I have to admit, that I love all my classes. Each group is unique and has its own personality.  I truly feel privileged that this is my job!!!  People coming together every week, to create together and connect in my studio. It’s a beautiful thing.

     Kids have a special way of seeing the world. Pablo Picasso said "It took me 4 years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." This is because as we grow up we are influenced by society and life; and our insecurities and our life experiences influence our creativity. I think what Picasso meant when he said this was that it took him a lifetime of painting to get back to that feeling of painting like a child. You can be taught to paint (not all of us to the level of Raphael  or Picasso! ), but to get back to that childlike excitement of painting, to experience art as a child, the feel of mixing colors and touching different mediums….that's what we need to get back to! I try to teach that to all my students. But for this class, I don’t need to! They still have it!  And a lot of times I learn from them. I learn to see art and artists through their eyes.  This week I decided to try to teach them about Mandalas. I wrote about Mandalas in my blog a few weeks ago and I have taught this to grown up students, but never to kids. It was an amazing experience and I wanted to share it with you.

     I started the class talking about what a Mandala is and showed them images of different Mandalas from all over the world and different cultures. We talked about how a Mandala is a way for us to express ourselves in a special way and connect with ourselves and the world around us. I had them close their eyes and do a little meditation exercise. It was very cute to see their reactions to this. My 7 year old daughter is in this class and I have been doing meditation with her since she was 3 years old. She uses breathing techniques all the time to help herself get through hard situations. When she is really upset, she will go to a corner, close her eyes, and just concentrate on her breathing – in and out -  it works every time! But, here she was the top giggler at the beginning! They were a bit self-conscious, but soon got into it. I had them focus on their breathing - in and out - and then told them to think of something they wish for, or a prayer or a thought for someone in their life. I told them to imagine this wish/prayer as a little light in their heart growing as they breathe in and out, growing and warming their body as it spreads through them and out around them to a circle surrounding them. I then told them to open their eyes and to draw a mandala starting in the middle of the page and like the light starting in their heart and growing out, to draw the Mandala starting in the center and growing out. I got the idea for this lesson from a website on Mandalas- http://illuminatedrose.com/mandala_kids.htm 

     The Mandalas that they drew were AMAZING!!!  I put out on the table A LOT of different materials for them to experiment with and express themselves through. We had collage, paints, pastels, markers and different brushes and stamps, finger painters and combs to play with texture and let’s not forget the 6-7 year olds favorite- GLITTER!!!. They really got into the paints and the colors; experimenting with different textures. Since I got permission from their parents I would like to share their work with you. I hope you enjoy seeing what they did as much as I 

enjoyed watching them create them!  

Amazing, Right?!

After class, my daughter was helping me to clean up the studio and there was A LOT of paint left over and papers that had been used and discarded. So we decided to make use of it all, and used the leftover paint to turn all that paper into amazingly unique textured papers that we can now use for other projects! Boy, did we have fun doing that! Here is an example of some paper we made and my very creative daughter’s work of art- notice her eye showing through!

Happy creating to us all. And may we all be able to paint like children!

Sharing my latest Commission

I want to start off this week by thanking all the amazing people that read my blog and comment on my musings. It means so much to me to know that my words touch you and you make the time to share your thoughts with me and others. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to write a  proper blog this week, But I didn’t want to go a week without posting. I would like to share with you a recent commission I did and hadn’t posted on my site yet. It is a sketch of the "Chazon Yechezkel" synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The picture is now in the gallery, and commissions page of this site. Feel free to look around and if you are, or know any one who may be interested, in commissioning a painting, feel free to contact me.

Wishing you all an amazing week, full of love, happiness, family, friendship, and of course- creativity!

In time of war...

     This isn't a political blog or a very personal one; but it is blog on women, motherhood and creativity- so I feel it’s important to discuss how we deal with being (or not being!) creative during times of stress. Sometimes during stressful situations there are no kids around and we have the time to create…this is our time. Only our thoughts are so consumed with stressful thoughts that it pushes creativity aside and paralyzes us. What if you can't find the muse to create!?

     When I was going through my divorce, for some reason I couldn't paint. I can’t explain it except to say that maybe I connect oil painting to a very emotional place in me and I didn't want to deal with that place, so I pushed it aside. But I found other ways to create. I created a lot of mosaics during that time. Something in the process of breaking things up, physically, and putting them together in a new beautiful way, spoke to me. The creative process helped me, healed me, calmed me and I found peace there.

     It took me along time to pick up my brush again. I worked with soft pastels, oil pastels and pencils and only recently got back into my oil painting again. And I love it again!

     But this past week I had an emotional blockage. I couldn't write my blog and I couldn't paint all week! I was too preoccupied with the war going on in my country. My mind was so consumed with thoughts, there was no room left for anything else.

If you aren't from Israel then you may not know there was a war going on here. Officially, it wasn't called a war. But believe me when I say that for the people in Israel it definitely felt like a war! The last time I heard sirens in Jerusalem and had to run to a safe room I was a teenager. I was living at home, a senior in high school, and my parents were there to protect me. I remember feeling that. It was a very family oriented time. We spent a lot of time at home just waiting for the sirens. We played a lot of backgammon and spent most of our time together glued to the TV to see what was going on in the country. Who was hit? How many injured? It was very scary, but I felt safe with my family.

      Last Friday night a siren went off in Jerusalem, I was home with two of my three kids. We grabbed the dog and ran into the safe room. I didn't know where my 16 year old was. I was very scared. We heard a boom -and I realized – I am the parent here. My kids are looking to me to feel safe. I didn't feel safe. My insides were screaming. Where is my son? Where did it hit? Where is my son? I hope no one got hurt! WHERE IS MY SON!!! But outside, I was calm. For my kids who were also nervous. I had to be calm and keep them calm. Hug them and reassure them that it will be okay. We just need to stay in the room 10 minutes to be sure and safe and then we will go out and see that all is okay….but inside…inside, I was scared too. And when my son came home, very shaken from the experience, I couldn't stop hugging him.

     When the next siren that went off in Jerusalem, I was teaching. I wasn't with my kids! I didn't know where they were, and that scared me. I didn't think anything had happened to them, but they weren't with me. Who is helping them feel safe?

And then a bus was blown up in Tel Aviv, and I couldn't breathe until my kids got home that day. They all take buses back and forth from school everyday…

     It has taken all my strength and emotions to keep it together for my kids. Our country was at war for a week. They saw the news. Even when Jerusalem wasn't affected we are all affected because this is a country where we are all one family. We all care for each other and want to protect each other like a family. We are all responsible for one another and want to feel safe.

     So, I couldn't write and I couldn't paint.  My thoughts were too consumed with worry and concern for my family.

     Now the painting will come again. Now I will express it all in my work. I need that distance from emotional events in my life to be able to create on them. Time to reflect, and then create. I dealt with my divorce in the end, as I dealt with my mother’s illness. I painted through it eventually. And it healed me. 

So let us all go back to creating, to living. And I wish my WHOLE family a safe, warm and peaceful week.