My paintings are the fruit of years spent living in the Galilee, a complex landscape of rocky hillsides with wild greenery, speckled with diverse Jewish and Arab communities. My practice is rooted in deeply observing this terrain—its changing light, its shifting seasons—while simultaneously contemplating my own physical presence within it, and the people and structures that populate it.

Small paintings and drawings from direct observation are the most basic and immediate response to this landscape, capturing moments when the drama of light and shadow transforms everything, and details lose some of their usual, discrete identities. The most immediate response to this environment results in small paintings and drawings from direct observation. These works capture fleeting moments when the drama of light and shadow transforms everything, allowing details to momentarily shed their discrete identities. This process constantly invigorates my vision, enabling me to see the world anew.

The "Land of Painting" series is infused with this spirit of observation but introduces a multiplicity of viewpoints. My own presence is manifested through the figure of a painter, clad in work clothes, situated on the edge of the canvas and the landscape itself. Her face is unseen, directing focus instead to her hands and feet—she is both inside and outside the frame. This painted figure is caught mid-activity: walking a tightrope or slackline, swinging, standing in prayer, or, of course, painting. This creates an implied analogy between painting, praying, and walking a tightrope. Many of these actions occur at the edge of an abyss, suggesting that the act of painting, much like life itself in the Israeli landscape, is a delicate balancing act. It combines danger with playfulness and excitement, arousing both trepidation and love. My love for this place is expressed through a complex gaze, both near and distant; a close-up of sand and rocks alongside a bird's-eye view of the entire land, all on the same canvas.

In some works, the tightrope is shared, with another foot approaching from the opposite end. It appears to be a zero-sum game, in which one of the two figures must fall. Thus, both figures embody a familiar scenario, especially in times of war: "either you or I." It is tempting to dismiss this sort of binary thinking, but tragically, it is sometimes necessary in the most basic sense, to ensure survival and life. However, works like Path (2022) suggest a simpler, if difficult, alternative: two figures walking toward one another on a narrow, stone-strewn path.

Painting allows me to simultaneously ponder these disparate states, and contain multiplicity and even contradiction, in both image and material. In the sphere of imagery, I have freedom to invent and stage scenes, such as a tightrope dissolving into a grounded path. In the realm of materials, oil paint allows the creation of layer upon layer, the meeting of thin and thick textures, sharp edges with blurred, almost invisible transitions.

Thus, over the past two years in particular, the vitality of painting has sharpened for me: It serves as a refuge of quiet presence and beauty – no small thing – and even protects me from falling, just like the stabilizing brush in the hand of the painted figure, poised above an abyss. Beyond this, painting allows for multiple voices and layers, in which a myriad of images and ideas may be examined, and can even coexist. Art has the potential to strengthen and expand complex and dialogic thought, offering a healing counterbalance to binary thinking.