Series - food from the soul

Project name: Food from the Soul

When did the project start?

I painted the first work, "A Pair of Peppers," a year ago, and since then, a lot of time and thought has passed.

The second work, "Pomegranate," was done three months ago. Immediately after "Pomegranate," in order, I worked on "Barbie Cake," "Strawberry," and "Cabbage."

A little about the creative process -

The work is always there, in my head, eyes, hands, and heart, even before the brush meets the canvas. The choice of how to look at things is the essence of the work in my eyes, even before it is created as something real that can be translated into technique, quantity, and color. First of all, the project was created from looking at the aesthetics of food, from the preparation stage as raw material to the second before it enters the mouth and fulfills its physical essence in our existence.

While I was unable to turn to the brushes, I found the camera replacing them and the kitchen letting my creativity fly. I replaced the acrylic with spices and the camera replaced the sketch book. Food can provide a physical solution to the body for survival, but the biggest part of it is what it gives to the soul.

The mediums the project is made of -

Acrylic on recycled wood and also acrylic on canvas.

"Pepper Pair" acrylic on a recycled wood surface. "Pomegranate", "Strawberry", "Barbie Cake" and "Cabbage" acrylic on canvas, with the works "Barbie Cake" and "Cabbage" having a combination of gluing and copying techniques.

The choice of medium/technique -

Acrylic allows me to work in layers. The base layer and preparing the canvas for painting is very important to me. I organize an environment for my subject and only then begin to work.

Research -

My relationship and that of the viewer to food, as an existential need and an emotional need accompanied by lust and desire.

Project topic -

When I serve food, I emphasize the way the food is organized and the aesthetics created on the plate in order to create an emotion and feeling in the diner.

In this project, I present a presentation of food on the canvas not as a still life object, but as an object with human qualities that evoke emotions and feelings in the viewer. For example, this moment when the viewer forgets that he is looking at food and meets the couple on the canvas.

Description of the beginning of work on the project-

The project began in my kitchen, in the camera lens and only then went through a process of processing and inclusion.

I begin the work by preparing a background and infrastructure on which I build the object, in fact a process that resembles graphic work in layers built on a computer. I work in a process of layers from the general to the particular, from the background to the foreground. The representation of the object on the canvas is received as a graphic element with an emphasis on a clear outline that is hard to miss with bright colors that distinguish the object from the background.

Source of inspiration for the project-

The search for food that will do me good physically and a process of dietary change that I went through over the course of several years brought a lot of love for basic, unpreserved food into my kitchen.

The story the work tells -

The project deals with food, whose function is certainly not only nourishment, but also as a spiritual need that brings out what is in our hearts. Food examines the relationships between us. Food as a sensual element, tempting and inviting and sometimes even repulsive.

The series includes five works: "A Pair of Peppers", "Pomegranate", "Barbie Cake", "Strawberry" and "Cabbage".

In "A Pair of Peppers" there is an intimate relationship, lots of sensuality and love, in "Pomegranate" there is intimacy, a real "murder scene" and in "Barbie Cake" there is an acceptance of old stigmas and an attempt to accept the temptation in love. The work on the beautiful and perfect "Strawberry" in a somewhat jarring environment with pink that does not give rest to the eyes and the cabbage that momentarily confuses us and allows us to check which layer we have already peeled off. The food becomes human and takes on the personification that I created for it.

The project was presented as part of the "Gallery on Thursday," the virtual gallery of the Facebook group The Residency - for Creative Processes, curated and directed by Merav Shinn Ben-Alon.