BIO

I always ran before I walked.

Born in Israel in 1955, at 16 I quit high school and moved to London. Being a dropout, I was lucky to get a production assistant job in television commercials. I loved that job, learning all about scripts, casting and television production. I took to it immediately. Coming home at night, I began drawing and painting. I am not sure why. My mother, an interior designer, surrounded our home with art objects. Her keen eye must have infiltrated my being. A small series of drawings remain from that time.

Several years later, after a brief career in television news back in Israel (covering the peace process with Egypt and Saadat’s visit to Jerusalem) and subsequently working on the Foreign Desk at CBS News in New York City (long story), I found myself seeking inspiration. A course in jewelry design at the 92nd Street Y led to a three decade long, successful, studio art jewelry career. (I did say I ran before I walked..)

During those years of making sculptural jewelry and unique wearable objects, I also began to work on larger sculptures, using steel wire armatures combined with handmade paper pulp. The several grants I received allowed me to show both jewelry, objects, and sculpture.

At my workbench, preparing for an exhibition, while manipulating steel wires, I glanced up and noticed several of my simple line drawings from my early years in London perched on the window sill. In spite of the water stains on them, the clear sense of line and voice was quite a revelation. The wire sculptures I was working on had a similar quality of line as the drawings. Here I was, several decades later, for the first time beginning to question what is the inherent voice of an artist. What is the raw voice in me?

The voice grew louder and more clear when I moved to the coast of Maine and began a new path of painting. Today, back in the Hudson Valley, NY, some ten years later, with three distinct bodies of work in jewelry, sculpture and now exclusively painting, as well as several solo painting exhibitions, I am beginning to recognize how a young voice that began in a quiet way, late at night in a London bedsitter, has never left the premises. I trust it never will.