This artical was published in The Israel-Hayom article https://www.israelhayom.co.il/mumlazim/article/11315585
The Painter Nurit Shany: "If you buy a painting? you buy that place that people forgot in the race of life"
Nurit Shani is an artist who paints a world that is not much talked about - a reality that is reflected in a parallel world. "When I create, I step into a world that has no boundaries and has a huge selection of content." We met her for a talk about art, creativity and inspiration .
"The spiritual world is not something new, it is described in different cultures and has been in consciousness since ancient times," This is how Nurit Shany opens the conversation with us. "Each of us acts from the spirit in parallel with reality".
Shany examined and ruled out the surrealist current and fantasy paintings that create virtual reality. She has chosen to stand in the seam line between physical reality and spiritual space and offers a different and new perspective on painting and on ourselves as viewers .
"Everywhere I go I take some nature with me"
We met her in her studio in the Noga neighborhood in Tel Aviv, a renewed urban space that has almost no vegetation and already at the entrance, large lotus leaves, and a green spot dotted with orange flowers greeted us.
The Tel-Aviv municipality has turned the Noga neighborhood, which is close to the sea, into an artists' neighborhood and encourages studios in commercial areas. Ten years ago, Nurit also rented a shop here: "I turned a shop space into a studio and planted plants to separate me from the hustle and bustle of the street. In those years, most painters painted in a closed studio or in a room in their apartment and displayed their work in galleries, while mine was a rotating exhibition in a window shop." A reality parallel to the art world at the time".
When did you start painting?
"I paint all my life, as a child, during my army service, at the Bezalel academy, when I became a mother and also when I got divorced, it is a profession that requires daily dedication".
"In my painting I remined people that one can look inside and discover surprises"
"Painting for me is that place that people have forgotten in the race of life, a place of refuge for pleasure, quiet, discovery and beauty. Every day, people are busy pleasing others and accepting the fact that things do not happen according to their will. In my works, I want to remind them to look inside and discover surprises within themselves.
The creative process is long and there are triggers that evoke it. Discovering visual value, such as a blind spot that the viewer discovers after reviewing a painting over and over again, activating the imagination while viewing, creating a different angle of view are triggers for a visual study that engenders new compositions. In my contemporary works I involve images of people. In every person lies a little tragedy, or comedy and every person is a story. The image evokes a story in us and the painting creates a place in the heart and in the mind .
A lot of ideas come up when I’m in nature , in the Galilee, in the Golan Heights, climb mountains in Europe, sleep in the Judean mountains, walk the desert trails or sit and watch the waves of the sea, when I am in my right place. Art collectors also inspire me, their falling in love with a painting is like magic connecting them to my spirit, it causes the buyer to place the art at home and a dialogue opens between the two that will last for years. Their enthusiasm is part of my inspiration to continue to create with power and passion .
For example, when I realized that people like to hang on the walls of their homes the view they see from their windows, it urged me to find in Tel Aviv a new love that created a longing in me, the nature of Tel Aviv, the beach strip and the roar of the waves. At first, I sat for long hours in front of the sea, then I painted the waves and the beach and the people who occupied it. There were several exhibitions because the curators wanted to bring the sea of Tel Aviv to the Negev desert in the South and to the Galilee mountains in the north. In an exhibition at the Montefiore Gallery one buyer told me: 'You drew me with my children, here, sitting on our blue blanket'. A friend called and said they are sitting in Charles Clore but actually they are sitting in one of my paintings, and today the paintings of this series are in art collections such as the Azrieli Collection."
The Charles clore beach in Tel Aviv, oil on canvas 180X80 cm
“When I create, I am in a borderless space”
"Tel Aviv is full of people, and they enter my consciousness. When I paint, I hear through the shop window moods, greetings, laughter, personal conversations of those standing by the flower pots and talking on the phone and also curses of drivers mercilessly honking. All of these become material for creation. Regardless of Tel Aviv, wherever I create, I step into a world that has no boundaries and has a huge selection of content from which I choose. Vision News".
How do you manage an independent studio, and the relationship with customers ?
"When the paintings go online as images, they correspond with a huge audience in the networks. My studio is frequented by passers-by, art lovers and collectors who come to buy directly from me. Between me and the gallery owners there is a transparent system and investors, art buyers, can buy paintings in both studio and galleries .
Sometimes a special bond is formed, for example if you order a painting,
we meet and I paint with great pleasure, because my experience of them is embedded in the painting. They are the treasures of my heritage, my body of work is entrusted to private hands, it is decentralized and each art lover is a culture keeper, a gate keeper. "In fact, I feel that they purchase a piece of my spirit - I may or may not meet the painting again, I release the works with love".
"A painting that was not ordered in advance is like an orphan, looking for a home."
How does the field of art fit in with the world of art trading?
"It is a triangle: creativity is one side, the art world is another side and art trade is also another thing. Art includes all media that pours content into form. The world of creativity is a spiritual dimension and the spirit of artists visit and stay in it. The world of art includes all the people who not necessarily create works of art but deal with it in trade or intellectually creating currents and fashions.
Escapism, oil on canvas, 150x100cm
"A painting begins with an image in my imagination, and ends with an image in cultural memory".
Shany is a very versatile artist with tremendous abilities to create styles that correspond with different currents in art yet throughout all periods, in all paintings her unique fingerprint can be discerned. Today Shani's painting style falls into the category of figurative painting and sometimes touches on the realistic. During the years of her work, she switched between different styles, ranging from abstract paintings to colorful graphic paintings, and theatrical themes which corresponded with her being a storyteller and actress at the time to a photo-realistic series of objects of the Israeli nature and to her contemporary research into the connection between imagination, reality, the creation of a paradigm in parallel existences.
How did the Coved affect you ?
"The Coved period promoted exposure and made my studio accessible to many clients and viewers through the networks. I believe that as the world becomes virtual, so will develop the thirst and longing for the original painting that begins with an image in imagination, becomes a painting and ends as an image in cultural memory.
The images that float in the public consciousness, begin with human action, mixing colors on a palette, a paintbrush sinking in color and a sensual laying on a stretched canvas. When you stand in front of an original painting and caress it with a look, you feel the spirit of the artist imprinted in it and the work acquires value. Only in the face of the actual work can one feel and breathe the spirit of the artist " .
In conclusion, what is the most important thing we need to know about you as an artist ?
"I love nature and love people. My art is part of a conversation with them about compassion, visual values and introspection. I care about the culture we create and therefore for me art and visual discoveries are a value to be preserved. I also want people to know of the spring from which I draw discoveries "I have parallel layers and realities. From which I invent my way of life as an artist in Tel Aviv and from which I give shape to the reality of my lives as a landscape, parallel to the inner world that produces memories, images and surprises whose meaning is revealed a long time."
A gaze towards the things I didn’t see, oil on canvas, 100x150cm
Links:
http://www.nuritshany.com /
https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/ נורי ת _שני _( צייר ת )
https://www.facebook.com/studionuritshany/
https://www.instagram.com/nurit_shany/
https://www.israelhayom.co.il/mumlazim/article/11315585