When I finished high school in 1978, I knew I would be a painter. This was what I loved doing, this was what I chose to study in high school, and my paintings decorated the walls of my parents' house.
I finished my art studies at the Center for Visual Art in Beer-Sheva in 1986, where I studied mostly drawing and ceramic design, for three years. In addition, I have been trained there as a teacher of art, drawing and ceramic design.
I had big dreams about painting and art, but I did not know that I would have to delay fulfilling them for many years.
I lived in Kibbutz Ein-Gedi after graduating, where they accepted me as an art teacher in the local school, and even allowed me to build a large pottery studio, complete with kilns and a pottery wheel. But they did not enable me to take one or two days a week to paint or indulge in my personal art. It was a significant frustration, and I enviously eyed artists who were more senior than me in the Kibbutz and acquired the coveted privilege of the "day of art".
In my work at school I chose an additional discipline, and set out to earn a degree in biblical studies. The stories of the Bible have always attracted me, as do foreign films about faraway lands. I paid special attention to the theme of women in the Bible, their social position and their way of life.
Thus, I combined teaching art and teaching the Bible at school.
As time passed, I had three children, and even left the Kibbutz and moved to the city of Modiin. Adjustment to city life and bringing up the children postponed the fulfillment of the dream further and further.
Here and there I drew in private, and even took various continuing courses with several painters over the years. And in 2014, when my youngest daughter graduated and set out on her own path, I decided to stop procrastinating and pursue the dream.
I started painting very intensively again, and even opened a studio for teaching drawing and painting. I now lead painting workshop-excursions to the most beautiful city for art in the world - Paris - and workshops for landscape painting in Israel.
To me, painting is the freedom to be myself. The ability to paint is an ability to deeply breath clear, fresh air which contains ingredients that make me happy and deeply excited.
I paint by observing the world, and my preferred experience is painting in Nature, in the early morning hours, with Nature as inspiration and bird tweets as background music.
Painting taught me to be patient, to love the road and trust it to lead me to my destination of desire. It taught me to cherish Nature and Creation, to be thankful for the gift which I have been given. It urged me to wish to pass this gift on to more and more people, who also met with the same desire to paint.
I live in Modiin, and around Modiin is one of the most beautiful areas in Israel. The forests, the vineyards, the fields of sunflowers and corn, the pomegranate orchards - I draw in all these sceneries, into myself and onto the painting substrate of my choice, with the brush, the knives and my fingers dancing, celebrating of the creation of the world together with the dance of the paints.
I have participated in group exhibitions in Israel and around the world, and had several solo exhibitions in Israel. I also open my home regularly for "open home" weekends, during which all the city's artists open their studio doors, and expose their work to the public. But to me, the essence, and the motivation for all I do in this field, is creating art.
