Author: Mazalart

Making Sense of it All

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Making Sense of it All Chanan Mazal @2017

Oil on canvas, 100 x 110 cm

כי האדם עץ השדה? דברים כ:יט
For is the tree of the field a man? Deuteronomy 20:19.

Using trees to portray human soul and destiny, is as old as art and psychology itself.

I choose particular species and shapes to symbolize my state of mind or big life questions. Trees may be steady or rebellious, wise or impetuous. mature or potential, spiritual or carnal, and Hebrew or universal.

Why this particular childlike tree shape?

Its fluffy, cloud like foliage sits top-heavy, upon the slender trunk with its graceful Gothic slouch. Well, that upper part obviously is about my/our air filled thoughts:
Head in the clouds. Spirituality for the masses. Fuzzy thinking.
All of that air sits upon a delicate, flexible trunk of decisiveness and actions.

I completed the painting while listening to online lectures about the psychological symbolism of Genesis. Symbols like The Creator carving meaning out of the primordial chaos and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – teach us so much about creating sense in our personal life path.

Those green serpentines of confusion and attention deficiency, were painted before listening to the lectures. After completion, visitors to my studio shouted, “Ah! That’s the serpent tempting Eve to eat from the fruit of self knowledge.”
Smart visitors.

India Ink

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Ah. So much fun. I do my best, most evocative works when drawing fast.  With inaccuracies, but true impressions.

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Working on wet paper, creates unpredictable spreading of ink. Delicious serendipity.

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And quasi soul searching. What did I really mean?

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And fun

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Shaar HaGai, 2015

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שער גיא 2015

Gouache over ink and pencil, on clay coated panels.

Somehow, I never posted this work, that touches a deep spot within my soul. Calming the storm.

Trente Triangles, 2017

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Trente Triangles 2017, ©2017 Chanan Mazal, Jerusalem

Thirty Triangles. Gouache, 46 x 61 cm. (18″ x 24″)
שלושים משולשים, 2017. גואש 46 * 61
Inspired by the “Crazy Quilts” traditionally made by African American women.
The composition, with its two, not quite balanced halves and with arrows pointing all over, defies all logic. But it works.

Inner Tempest

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The Tempest #1, Painting by Chanan Mazal, Jerusalem 2017

The Tempest #1, 2017. Gouache on Claybord. 46 x 91.5 cm.

Good friends with good eyes are important. I painted this pair a year ago (the work on the previous post as well). But something prevented me from showing them.

I had wanted to capture the contrast between the interior tempest that I/we often feel, and the cultured, refined and well tempered face that we present to the world. Both facades are truly representative. Neither lie. My goal was to allow them to live together, on this board.

A few weeks ago I invited my art teacher and friend Orna Milo, to the studio. She recommended that I stop listening to other noises focus on that story. After a mere half hour of eliminated extraneous sounds, the pair were completed.

What? More Cypresses?

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The Tempest #2, 2017. Gouache on Claybord. 46 x 91.5 cm.

Cypresses 2017. gouache on Claybord Like the work posted last week, I painted this many months ago, but wasn’t sure if I was satisfied. I reworked both paintings last week.

Something about the relative emptiness of the center, and stronger contrasts to the far left and right, spoke to me. I am not sure of what my point was… something about not looking for significance where it is “supposed to be”?

Or that there can be competing ideas of significance? With neither winning the arm wrestle?

Natural Forest

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Natural Forest #1, by Chanan Mazal, Jerusalem

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.

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

חורש טבעי #2
גואש על נייר, 46 * 61