gouache

And I Saw a Cypress | ואני ראיתי ברוש

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Cypress - gouache painting by @Chanan Mazal 2014

And I saw a cypress tree, standing firm in a field. Facing the sun, hot desert winds and frost. Facing off the storm.

The cypress had doubled over, and bowed down to the weeds, without breaking.
And now, that cypress stands up straight up facing the sea, and is still green and towering….

If only I could learn the path of that single tree….

From the upbeat song Brosh / Cypress. Lyrics by Ehud Manor, melody Ariel Zilber.

This happy song ends however with self doubt,
And I am like an infant, broken and incapable. Unable to stand firm, facing the sun, the desert winds and frost. Unable to face the storm. La la la.

Cypress - painting by Chanan Mazal ©2014 Jerusalem

This series reflects the battle between my hidden, wild and naughty exuberance, and my mask of decorum. While painting, I felt as if my own, real life value conflicts, were right at the surface. I enhanced my true confusion, by repeatedly reversing the sense of order and disorder, and of positive and negative images within each painting.

Cypress - gouache painting by Chanan Mazal ©2014 Jerusalem

Tall cypress trees and falling leaves or else tall ladders appear in all paintings. Are they connecting Heaven and Earth? Or perhaps connecting body and soul? Balancing freedom with obligation? Symbols of mortality and the afterlife? Self-discipline and commitment?

Whatever. 

חשבון נפש

Cypress-Gouache painting by Chanan Mazal ©2014 Jerusalem

16 Works in gouache over pencil, pastel and ink, on clay coated wooden panels. 30×30 30×40 and 40×50 cm. Painted in spring and summer 2014.


Before he left us so young, I drank coffee next to the lyricist Ehud Manor and his family in the airport. Several travelers complemented the shy celeb, and interrupting their breakfast.

A cleaning woman, a gold toothed immigrant from Soviet Georgia speaking very broken Hebrew, simply looked for a kind face. She found an unwanted ticket entitling passengers to a free Hebrew language newspaper. From all of the dozens of people around, she chose to ask Ehud to collect one from the news stand, somehow explaining that she wanted her children to practice reading Hebrew.

She sensed correctly whom to pick. Ehud left his coffee, and brought it to her with his modest smile.

Competing with the Bedspread?

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Bronx Oranges by Chanan Mazal

.Bronx Oranges, 2012. Gouache on paper 46 x 61. Available

This is an old favorite of mine. My grandmother saved a bag of housecoats sewn for her by my grandfather, in Art Deco fabrics. It is funny how inspirations are stored in our memory.
I know that interior designers tend to select artwork, that won’t compete for attention with their more profitable choices of floor coverings and bedspreads… but this would be lovely in some countryside boutique hotel

One Persian Flask – Gouache and ink, 61 x 46 cm. December 1, 2014. Available

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1-Persian-Flask900

בקבוק פרסי, גואש ודיו.  46 * 61 ס”מ, 1.12.2014. למכירה

I truly tried to make this one ugly at first. It seemed as if the initial  nasty color combinations and spooky undercurrents, were beyond my ability to turn into something with delicacy and conventional beauty. Did my self imposed challenge succeed?

Tablecloth #6, 2014

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Tablecloth #6, 2014. Gouache painting by Chanan Mazal, Jerusalem. חנן מזל
מפה #6, 2014 ציור גואש 46 * 61 ס”מ
Autumn colors – though actually the palette was concocted by a self challange: I had several dried tubes of paint. Being of Polish Jewish origin, I must have inherited an ancestral fear of poverty, and aversion to waste. So I sliced open many of those hardened tubs, and crumbled the pigments into water. (Now this is NOT what artists should be publishing to promote their work!) And then asked myself, “What can you DO with this mess?
There is nothing that I enjoy more than finding beauty in a mess. Making harmony out of cacophony. Finding my directions on Paris’ confusing streets, without a map.