Classes

I have been teaching Art for the past 30 years. Some of it in Art schools, others in non artistic environments like Beit Amir in Jerusalem which was a Center for Healing trough the use of the therapeutic aspects of the Arts as well as other healing disciplines. At the same time I have always maintained small groups of dedicated students in my private studio. There are many advantages to study in an Art school environment as there are in more private settings of an artist studio, where it is possible to see the real process of doing art with all the specifics of individual approach. Personally, I was quite disappointed from the teaching methods of my time with the Abstractionists hegemony ruling the culture, without leaving much room for the many young and aspiring artists like myself who were more classically oriented, naively hoping to find in our teachers the custodians of the great tradition of the Old Masters. This was only one of the reasons that compelled me to abandon the school environment and search for a contemporary “Old Master” who could fulfill my passion for the Classical. Luckily, I have met the right teacher in right time.

As the famous saying goes, “When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears”, so it was in my case .Exactly at the time of my distressful search for someone who could teach me the classical methods of the glorious Old Masters, I have encountered a contemporary classical artist, Israel Zohar who was holding an exhibition at that time inspired by the great Dutch Master Jan Vermeer. I have spent a wonderful year in Zohar’s studio in Jerusalem and feel very grateful to all what he taught me but specifically I am grateful for introducing me to the wonderful classical mixed technique of thin oil color glazes over a tempera underpainting .With time, I went on to study other, more contemporary approaches and touched briefly on non- representational painting that allowed me great freedom and understanding of color but at the same time could not satisfy my curiosity towards the intricacies and wonders of the individual Form. At some point in time, with appearance of a rare opportunity to deepen my theoretical understanding of the principles of Art teaching I enrolled in a course for Masters degree in teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art, only to realize how far removed and how irrelevant the academics are from the living realities of an artists’ studio. So in a way, I had no choice but to continue study on my own, something I have done anyway from an early age. Eventually, with time, studying on my own from books, trough experimentation and observation a teaching method started to emerge which was a natural accumulation of the various techniques, materials and themes that gradually evolved into ” The Sound of Form”- a two years Painting and Drawing Art course, combining a thorough study of the techniques and materials of drawing and painting with the principles of visual thinking and creativity.