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 writes "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.
The thorns I paint symbolize for me the simplicity, the beauty, the strength to withstand changing conditions, the hard edges in my experience of my environment.
Nature as a self-portrait.
