Natural Forest #1, 2016
Gouache on paper, 46 x 61 cm. Sold

חורש טבעי #1, 2016
גואש על נייר, 46 * 61. נמכר

Israel’s natural forest is low, small trees, with small hard leaves. We have none of the towering straight lines of the wet north. Like everything else here, our trees like complex multiple trunks. That is, other than the planted forests of the JNF, with their imported pines standing in even spaced rows.

When we were still engaged, hiked in the mountains of the Western Galilee. The path climbed down a steep ravine with one of the healthiest natural woodlands in the country. I was enthralled by the deep damp shade and barely passable maze of the oak trunks. There, near the ground, I found coolness on that oven hot day.

Sloshing through the Bezet stream, we crossed paths with an older gentleman, wearing a suit and tie, feathered fedora and wet rolled up trousers.

“Did you see that “Yekke” hiking a suit? I asked.”
“Ah, he is a relative.”

I often paint trees. If all paintings are actually self portraits, than one of trees is even more so. In this series, I am not investigating the solitary tree trunk, but rather trees as a part of an ecology. I am investigating man as defined and enriched by the surrounding landscape of his life choices.

Painted from memory of that hike.

Natural Forest #2, 2016
Gouache on paper, 46 x 61 cm.

חורש טבעי #2
גואש על נייר, 46 * 61