The Pardes Portraits Project, 2020
The current series, Pardes Portraits, 2020 was conceived in studying Jewish mysticism, related the mystical grove or garden where human beings can encounter the Divine. Here, it is visualized as a series of portraits, each 18" x 24". The Paintings represent figures from Jewish Text, History or my own personal life. Rather than conceiving the Pardes “garden” as a landscape, I transposed the idea place as landscape, to a phenomenological experience of the human face, whether historical, mythic, or personal. My goal is to link the genre of the observed portrait with multiple source materials: direct observation, historical photos and prints, movie stills, cartoons, and other artists representations, consciously bonding all modes of creative encounter as one.
