The story of colors in my childless drawings
- Nurit Shany
- Sep 8
- 5 min read
Nurit Shany
In 2026, I discovered 30 paintings in my archive that I had been archived in the 1980s. It was a difficult time in my life. I had just graduated from Bezalel, was studying art therapy, and was trying to conceive without success. I went through six unsuccessful pregnancies, until a second in-vitro pregnancy was conceived and the doctor ordered the pregnancy to be maintained.
During those six years, I lived off and on with my husband, the father of my daughters. He was engaged in biological research and lived in the desert, while I lived alone in a small hut in the Jerusalem hills. Pregnancy intensified my love for the smell of earth. Especially earth under a fire after the rain. I would grab some dirt, hold it to my nose, and inhale deeply. I was not allowed to tend to the garden. So I went out every day with a dark knife, and sitting down, during my pregnancy I dug1000 squire meters. I planted flowers and watered them, and passersby smiled at me through the colorful blooms.
How do colors express mood?
In the garden, as in the painting, they are playful..
Researchers and art critics wonder about the complex question of how compatible is the understanding of colors in the choice of the creator and the observer, because the choice of colors does not always pass through the consciousness of the creator. Looking back, the observer of a painting can say about a dark and nightly painting that it is depressing and oppressive and about a bright painting that it is happy and cheerful. But is there a connection between what the observer interprets and the intention of the creator. For example, Van Gogh's paintings glow in sunlight. But did he feel illuminated when he painted them, or did he miss the light and therefore filled his longing through yellow in his painting?
I tend to accept the second answer.
My story is not about Van Gogh but about thirty paintings that I found in my archive.
About the fact that colors are symbolic frequencies. They affect us through the sense of sight and produce a variety of emotions between elation and depression.
Colors have an accurate representation of content. For example, the color yellow represents both light and communication. And maybe Van Gogh was seeking understand and communications, which he sought in nature, did not find in women, or his family?
Let's define for a moment a scale of content that corresponds to color, like a reading of frequencies and try to observe the paintings that I painted during such a sad time in my life, when I could not conceive and I embraced the book of Job in my arms, because I felt that God had abandoned me too. Until I was saved because I became pregnant with my first daughter and then miraculously with my second daughter.
Red is the most dynamic outwardly, optimistic, active, full of movement, lively color motivating application and action, and also describes blood and fear of death.
Orange is a soft color of twilight that inspires relaxation, softness and comfort when temperatures balance and allow a little more rest before a new day or rest after a day gone by in the soft and pleasant light.
Yellow is the color of the sun and light, communication and language.
Green is the color of growth and heart connection between people in love, and a choice of desire that stems from creating an affinity for content and place.
Blue is the color of talent and ability, of giving for the sake of giving and spiritual love
Purple is the color of imagination, mystics, advice therapy, and healing.
white is the color of purity, quietness, inspiration and closeness to the unity of the Creator.
Let's assume that when all the colors work in combination with each other they create the whole that is you, or the unity of all of us. Perhaps, if you allow yourself to sail beyond the concrete and the physical, we can also say say that the colors all together depict the image of God that each of us represents a part of?
And here is a case in life, when such a deep desire of a woman to give birth is not fulfilled. A woman, me, wants children and for seven years her desire is not fulfilled and she cracks.
I am no longer exactly the woman who painted them. Over the next thirty-five years of my life, my painting style also changed, but I look at the paintings of a woman I know well. In all the paintings I see a clear statement:
"Here is my whole. It is broken into parts, how will I be whole again if I don't have children and I live with a crack in my soul? And what will the new order look like if I have children?"
Looking back, now I know I gave birth and I can't tell that to the barren painter that... I can hear her, she can't hear me for she doesn't know me.
The barren paintings are an expression of a search for a new order. I invite you to attend to the contents that emerge from them and the colors that dance in each slightly different composition. Pay attention to the story of the colors and separately to the lines and imagery that tell a parallel story, while the colors explore the possibility of harmony, the lines, and the figures tell a story of a loss of grip, loss of equilibrium and balance.
Red: "Where has my innocents go, my life, torn with woman's blood", oil on canvas, 1986
Orange: "Where will I find pleasure as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death", oil on canvas, 1986
"If I float on the surface, I will delight in the beauty of the world among the stains of my pubic blood / I will stand erect on both feet to hang a sheet of my shame / I will absorb wind, grow and fly/ and build myself a small house in a green field in the light of sunset."
Yellow/Purple: "Unknown Loss", oil on canvas, 1986
"Unknown loss is not within the realm of understanding / The sun is beating / A tree is withering / the wind touches my cheek / awaits with me an answer./ I seek purple to bring me healing / a supernatural answer, for I am empty."
Blue: "In the sea of my talents, I get to stay in the middle of a calm breath", oil on canvas, 1986
"In the sea of my talents, I can rest in the middle of a calm breath / I see two, / I will be one inverted / maybe this is just the reflection of the water?"
White: "They say white is the great healer so I climed high to reaach in in my soul", oil on canvas, 1986
Searching for the Whole: "I Touched the Color Circle and what Did I Find?", Oil on Canvas 1986
"A color circle is a circle of frequencies contained in white, evoking life, healing and growth. The birth of white in the movement of shades that penetrate the cracks of being into a whole, clean, renewe."
In 1986, painting, color and expression were for me a support for recovery from the sadness that arose in the face of the emptiness and barrenness. The experience is that of the emptying of the moon. A black moon. When barrenness lasts for years, there is no knowing when it will be filled again.
I got lucky and I was filled. I received a pardon.
I am inviting you to the following link for a guided imagery of cleansing using the colors of the rainbow::
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