This body of work continues my exploration of the themes of birth and death in the familial relations that shape our lives. In previous work, I have been thinking about my late artist grandmother whose main painterly subject was sunflowers, and her influence on my art in life. I have been working through my move away from Israel which occurred around the time of her death and how to continue traditions from the culture I was born to with my new family in my current home here in Minnesota. I was also pregnant then and was engaged in observing how my body changed in preparation for and then during birth. This all took form in a body of work consisting of white canvas with sunflower seeds piercing through and with sunflower heads embedded within. The sunflowers seeds in my work or a metaphor for the potential for a new beginning. The flower represents my family, my origins, and my future

In this body of work, I'm exploring mother-daughter relationships and the influence of generations on each other through line, shape, and color. I question the meaning of my role as an artist through my relationship with my grandmother and my daughter. I was never invited to participate in my grandmother’s creative work and there was always a feeling of privacy in her approach to art practice. In contrast, my inclusive act of collaborative creation with my daughter has produced artistic freedom that manifests in light and color in my work. She opens the composition with bold strokes of line and circles and I later complete the piece. The tension and relationships between the shapes and color in my work reference my ongoing questions about motherhood origins and culture. 

 

The experience of having children has changed my life as well as my art the switch of motherhood was turned on and this light revealed an array of new colors.

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