Pomegranates
Another small canvas. I am happy with the results.

Zig Zag
I used color to create the effects of perspective, even when the preliminary drawing is totally flat. I hope to do this with greater intention and experimentation in another painting. The idea is so appropriate for Jerusalem - a city that can be viewed from so many angles, physically, symbolically and spiritually. The Cubists used multiple points of view, to investigate depicting space. Maybe I will use it to investigate meaning.

I have started working on very small canvases again. Because the can be finished quicker, I feel free to experiment with variations on color palettes, transparencies and 3D pyrotechnics.

Self Portraits

The first, pencil drawing is quite accurate - especially to mey eyes, since I am used to viewing my asymetrical face mirrored left/right. My eyes are somewhat enlarged, as they appeared reflected through the lenses of my eyeglasses.

I enjoyed applying color to the second quick sketch

Self Portrait

Once again, I played with a minimal pallet of, and maximum of pattern, textures, and contrast between matte and reflective surfaces. I used paints containing mica and grains of stainless steel. When photographing the painting, I had to choose between capturing the colors accurately, or capturing the reflections. Oh well. I have a lot to learn about photographing art work.
The oversized figs are surrealistic in dimension, which is by the fact that the background is so broken into little elements and its silvery colors.

Fresh Figs in Baskets II

I started this painting and the previous one, the same Friday. I finished cooking and cleaning early, and went to the studio for an hour and a half before Shabbat. (It usually takes me a long time in the mornings, to begin thinking creatively - and then, all too soon, the day is over. Perhaps a tighter schedule works better for me.) The results were good. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the other fig painting. This one needed lots of reworking.

Fresh Figs in Baskets
תאנים
Once figs were the plebeian fruit. The grow easily, without much water. Even more important, the fruits ripen over a long period. One tree can give fresh fruit over a long period - exactly what makes them so problematic today. You have to send your Thai worker to comb each tree every few days for months.
And you can dry them for the off season. And tie them in rings for desert caravan. (I'm filling space about plebeians again.) Then Haute Cuisine discovered figs.
Anyway, I love them.
Anyway, thanks to Haute Cuisine - or to my talent, this painting was one of the most talked about at my showing at the URJ Convention in San Diego in December.

Nefilat Apa'im

Morning Light

This is the first of a series of sleepers, the largest, and one of the more introspective.
Once again, I contrasted black and white, with color. Contrasted 2 patterns of two cooler complementary colors, with a large area of one warm, contrasted delicate lines, with bold. Contrasted round geometrics, with razor straight. Contrasted happy sunshine, with lonely melancholia. Contrasted flat symplification and abstraction of the human figure - with one small, expressive, detailed and multidimensional area: the sole of the foot.

I like it.
And was afraid of reactions.
And have waited several weeks till I posted it.
I mean - I'm a JUDAICA artist. Will this surprise my clientèle?

Still working on it.
I grayed out some areas, and made the image more comprehensible and coherent. Never underestimate the POWER of grey.

Still Unnamed

I experimented with the pallet knife. I always use a long narrow one, but I found that the wide ones, both big and tiny, gave me the desire effect.
It it done?
Dunno.
I'm debating whether to add some sort of visual arrow, pointing in from the bottom right corner, cutting across the 3 parallel leaves.

Well, it doesn't have a name yet.

(Why does it need a name? Kinda presumptuous. I guess it's to keep the gallery owners from getting confused. So the price list makes sense.)

Anyway, this is my HUGE Black and White Pomegranates Painting.

And just to proove how much I've been working at it - or to view the way my Devious Design Mind works, I'm posting a progress report.

It ain't done yet.

Black and White and Red All Over
Final Version.
While the colors in this post, are perhaps a bit too blue, they are more accurate than the golden cast made by the halogen lighting in the previous post.
Photoshop for both of them.

The Power of Black and White
הכח של שחור לבן

I played with opposites. Black and white patterns are by nature, quite colorful. By multiplying textures, inverting positive and negative spaces and playing with the moods that shapes suggest - the artist can suggest color to the brain.

Not content with this challenge, I then played with the contrast between gentle colored patterns and objects, and the starkness of the black and white ceramics. Which is stronger? I had to work hard to balance them.

Then I added another trick question for the viewer's brain. We tend to seek out light. But what is the most brilliant - the dirty white, or the reflective silvers and golds?

Ha! Confused you! Now go find your way in the picture, with the arrows and tangents pointing in all different ways.

Pomegranates - Unnamed

I sold this painting - one of my favorites, when still unnamed. I described it as being influenced by the Wiener Werkstätte. So at the risk of sending my very Israeli pomegranates into Exile, I might name it "Vienna Pomegranates".

Painting it (a great learning experience) was tremendous fun. I schlepped the canvas home each evening under my arm (If I was one cm shorter, it wouldn't fit) and painted like a Whirling Dervish until 2 or 3 am.

Unfortunately, my broken camera, and my lack of experience, do not allow a better view of the layers of color, textures and reflections. As I type this, I am kicking myself for not getting it professionally photographed. But as usual, my best works are made under pressure. I finished this beauty the night before my flight to exhibitions in the US, framed it in the morning, and schlepped it on the plane.

Sold, to a private collector US

And Your Children Shall Return to Their Borders
ושבו בנים לגבולם

The original was painted in goache, and has been printed by giclée.
The painting contains a mixture of significant historical and schematic buildings.

Tzuf Devash
צו"ף דב"ש

The Tzuf Devash synagogue, belonging to the Moroccan community within the Old City of Jerusalem, survived the Jordanian occupation as a hollow shell. As it is hidded away inside a courtyard, the gem is not well known or visited.

I began the painting, both inspired by the beauty of building itself, the pioneering spirit of its builders, and with an ambition to make the acrylic paint do 3D pyrotechnics. I chose a very rigid symmetrical composition, to counterbalance the finger painting. The plants at the base were added much later, to provide a restful break from the symmetry.

Afula Synagogue
בית הכנסת הגדול - עפולה

The road to Afula plows straight though the Jezrael Valley. Very unusual in this hilly country. Hence, it is called the "Ruler Road" and Afula - "The hole at the end of the ruler".
At the very center of the hole, lies one of the most charming main streets in the country, with a wide avenue of huge palm trees and benches running down the center. So much love was given in Afula's building!
At the head of the avenue, stands the Great Synagogue, Bet Shalom. It was built in 1928, and hasn't lost a bit of it's beauty.
This small painting as one of my first on canvas, and I'm keeping it as a souvenir. I battled with the paint medium, as I had only worked with goache and aquarelle for many years.