The subject is an undefined Biblical scene, in the Land of Israel. Since it is made up of different layers which have accumulated over a few years of painting and re-painting, the canvas itself has started to take on something of an archaeological character.
It’s an unresolved picture. I’m aiming to bring it alive now and finish it. It’s oil on canvas-board, with gold leaf, on a massively thick and heavy plywood board – 61 x 77cm. My aim was originally to create something akin to an icon painting, evoking the ancient Holy Land, but using a style that evoked the idealized zionist graphic depictions of Palestine in the 1930’s. The figures outlined in white in the first photo above are all new – added just now. Their colours are emerging brighter than I’ve used before in oils – definitely influenced by my children’s Torah series.
What’s the point of my art?
I’m concerned with touching on a spiritual quality that is perhaps missing from the concerns of many artists today. I think I’m trying to produce something with a real meaning – if not an explicit message, then an inferred one. Who are we? Where are we? Where are we going? (These questions remind me of Paul Gauguin’s allegorical painting of 1898 “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” These questions came from his schooldays in a Church school).
When I was beginning my own spiritual search, shortly after coming to Israel. I came across a book by Reshad Feild which touched me deeply (The Invisible Way, Element Books, 1979). It talked about humankind’s connection with the One Source of all, which is a connection of love, as expressed in Sufi poetry and lore. Through that opening of a door into the world of the soul, I discovered the Jewish mystical tradition. At its essence is the same thing: The Unity of all, and our connection to it, which is through love, and divine service (in the Jewish tradition, through the mitzvot).
Maybe my art can express something of this Unity – somehow?
Close-ups below:
