קוצים / Kotzim
The choice to live in the north of the country (Israel) is a choice to live on the edge. on the border line between one identity and another. In constant friction with the bubbling and changing Middle Eastern reality.
The choice to make art in the north is necessarily from the point of view of living on the margins. There is something direct. rough. An exposed nerve of a specific personal experience that makes no apologies for being itself.
Shaul Tchernichovsky write “man is nothing more than a template of his native landscape..” and establishes an Israeli ethos of a close relationship between man and nature. In the Upper Galilee where I live, the connection to the land is expressed literally in the daily life of its residents. Whether from an economic, security, political, or cultural point of view, nature is cast as the main character.
For me, the north is a place where everything happens outdoors—the light, the weather, the contours of the landscape, and the wild vegetation- the “thorns”. The natural, candid atmosphere seeps into my work and serves as its foundation.
There is a constant contrast here between tenderness and cruelty, between the aesthetics of nature and the hardships of existence.
The thorns I draw reflect, for me, the essence of this place: simplicity alongside rugged beauty, resilience amid changing conditions, strength alongside prickles. They symbolize my experience—both personal and collective—within the physical, social, and emotional landscape in which I live.
In this sense, nature is a self-portrait.
Through thorns, I express the encounter between inner and outer, between person and place, between beauty and difficulty.
קיפודן / Echinops adenocaulos
גדילן / Silybum
פרא / Wild
גזר קיפח / Daucus carota
אש / Fire