Wall Stories- Part I

The first time it happened I was just a few days from becoming 30. It took a great curator (Ayelet Hashachar Cohen) and an emotional letter to persuade the director of Ramat Gan Museum to allow me to paint all over the wall. I promised to paint it white back myself and then it was all up to me. My bosses from the restoration work, Shay Farkash and Eli Shaltiel, gave me one of the company’s scaffolds, some helpers (Tanya Smirnova and Ktura Manor) and colors and we had 3 days to make it before the opening. That's when I learned for the first time how physical a painting may be. At the opening, on my birthday, I still had muscles crumbs.

Me and Ayelet Hashachar Cohen in progress

So what started as a dream in my head turned into a photoshop illustration in order to communicate between my vision and other people’s understanding of it.

The sketch

And finally the initial thought became a mural in the space, which everyone can view.

A view of the wall from the solo show "Goodbye Words", photo by Youval Hai

My wish was to stretch a painting and see what happens when it becomes part of the architecture. I wanted to let the viewers feel close to the painting without the need to explain it with words. The scale of it affects the body as well as the mind. When you stand far away you see an image, a landscape at dusk. when you are close, you can see many details of the wall texture and how the colors slide on it, creating many shades and forms, a bit like in nature..

Wall closeup by Youval Hai

Keeping the promise and painting it white back with a bit of Daddy's help..

The experience in the museum was worth the effort and opened the appetite for the next wall work.

Wellcome, acrylic on concrete wall, Haifa University, 2015

This one came few months later. During the MFA studies in Haifa we were offered to create a mural for a very generous scholarship. Again, I made a digital sketch and got the approval.

A simple photoshop work can make magic, the primal sketch

The Idea was to paint the beauty of earth and sky without ignoring the heavy pollution we see and breath around us, especially in Haifa, one of the most polluted cities in Israel.

We produced the wall paintings during the Passover vacation 2015 and had some good time in Haifa for those 3 days. A bit like an artistic road trip.

Alex Kremer, Moran Fisher and me on the way to Haifa city

Alex's Mural

Moran working on her piece

Blue Hickey

Now I must say a bit about my job in Tchelet Studio. For the last 4 years I have been working in restoration of wall paintings. Except for the fact that I love the work and the people, and I get a bit of money, it gives me some inspiration every now and then.

Hotel Nordau in the heart of Tel aviv, Nahalat Binyamin St.

Kibutz Zikim, an old arab villa ceiling painting

We uncover the wall paintings, fix them, retouch, and sometimes make a new version of the old patterns.

Tanya in Rishon Lezion, working on a full room painting in Gordon London old hotel.

So my next mural artwork was a variation of a very simple Trompe l'oeil which I found in one of the books of our company’s archive:

This is a page from a book which is called Trompe l'oeil and is all about that. Trompe l'oeil in a nutshell is a painting which creates illusion of the eye. It makes the 2 dimentional work look as if it is actually 3D.

A closeup

Eyes, Acrylic on wall, Haifa University, 2015

The final work was part of a solo show in the Haifa University by the name Mediterranean Space.

Next to it were more of my works in different medias:

Then came The Refrigerator. A large group exhibition in an old underground cooling space, which was used to store fruits and vegetables to the long gone commerce market in Tel Aviv. I worked on it together with Ktura Manor, a good friend, artist, and former worker of Tchelet restoration team.

The work refers to this location as it creates a fictional underground memorial for historical buildings from Tel Aviv which were destroyed along the years from various reasons.

We created a babylon tower of all those dead houses and behind it was a 15 m long wall painting with the addresses of them.