Read about this seriesArabesque. I started working on the Arabesque series a few years ago while listening to the '24 Preludes and Fugues' of Dmitri Shostakovich. The playfulness and spontaneity of the music, as well as its forcefulness and straightforwardness, made me listen to these pieces intently. The music was demanding in the same way something unplanned and unexpected or even dreadful could be - like finally pulling out three-day-old laundry from the laundry basket and folding it, for example - demanding, but in a positive way once you got used to the idea of it. Listening to these pieces, I felt as if I was standing in the rain without an umbrella - at first wanting to run for cover, but on second thought feeling the sensation of the rain drops splattering in my face, and wanting to stay. Indeed, I stayed, and altered my original idea - whatever it may have been I planned to work on that day - completely. Unintentionally, and without much effort, the music was transformed onto the canvas in lines, forms and colors that floated around freely, without the forced intentions one's brain can produce sometimes. With ease and understanding, they were making connections to one another - a little tangle dancing toward a little twist, kissing it gently. A half moon giving an embrace to a little swirl ... A whole new universe was invented. I felt as if I were a dance instructor working on the fine and more detailed parts of the painting, and at the same time as if I was directing traffic, if you will, when I applied darker, more imposing layers - in the end I felt that what I had created was more or less a relationship, rather than a painting. Much later on, a couple of years or so later, I realized that in the Arabesque series I have gotten - so far - as close as possible to the spontaneity only a child could achieve. I have started thinking of my childhood and how occupied I was every day by reading and drawing, and remembered the images of my childhood drawings - fantastic swirly doodles, snake-like looking stripes, and tangles of shapes reminding one of trees and big leaves in a jungle somewhere, and it all came back anew. |
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GARDENS (Arabesque series) oil on canvas 18" X 18" each |
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ARABESQUE
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ARABESQUE
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ARABESQUE SERIES - TRIPTYCH
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ARABESQUE FLYING
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FALLING LEAVES
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IN THE WIND
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WHILE I WAS WAITING
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ARABESQUE #1
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ARABESQUE #2
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ARABESQUE #3
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ARABESQUE #4
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ARABESQUE
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ARABESQUE - SWIRLY WHIRLY WORLD
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ARABESQUE
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