I use graphite on silk and paper to create abstract landscapes that challenge traditional notions of figure and ground. Using a blend of direct tracing, and invented mark-making, I creates moments where the background and foreground collapse into each other. I draw to explore the boundaries of the real and the imaginary, and to document our evolving experience of the land.

 

As a Jewish artist, this work is an attempt to to collapse reality with myth, and re-visit the idea of “Gan Eden” [Garden of Eden] neither within the boundaries of the state of Israel, nor shrouded in the myth of the Torah, but in California. In doing so, I hope to orient notions of Jewish identity away from the state of Israel, and towards the land where I live.

 

California is, of course, a fraught landscape with a history of land-theft, violence, and dispossession. These works are a way for me to explore the tension between beautiful vista and ugly history. They are my attempt to create a place where hope and despair can coexist.